In the twenty-first century, plant anatomy remains highly relevant to systematics, paleobotany, and the relatively new science of developmental genetics, which interfaces disciplines and utilizes a combination of techniques to examine gene expression in growing tissues. Modern students need to consider information from an increasingly wide range of sources, most notably integrating morphological and molecular data. The third, thoroughly revised, edition of this book presents an introduction to plant anatomy for students of botany and related disciplines.

Although the simple optical lens has been used for centuries to examine plant structure, detailed studies of plant anatomy originated with the invention of the compound microscope in the seventeenth century. Nehemiah Grew (1641−1712) and Marcello Malpighi (1628−1694), physicians working independently in England and Italy respectively, were early pioneers of the microscopical examination of plant cells and tissues. Their prescient work formed the foundation that eventually led to the development of our understanding of cell structure and cell division. Other early outstanding figures included Robert Brown (1773−1858), who discovered the nucleus, and the plant embryologist Wilhelm Hofmeister (1824–1877), who first described the alternation of generations in the life cycle of land plants. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries plant anatomy became an important element of studies of both physiology and systematic biology, and an integral aspect of research in the developing field of anatomical paleobotany, led by such luminaries as Dukinfield Henry Scott (1854−1934). The physiologist Gottlieb Haberlandt (1854–1945) utilized anatomical observations in his ground-breaking work on photosynthetic carbon metabolism.