The orientations of recrystallization nuclei and their adjacent as-deformed regions have been characterised in deformed single crystals of different metals (Ag, Cu, Cu-2%wt.Al and Cu-8%wt.Al) in which twinning and/or shear banding occur. {112}<111> oriented crystals of these metals have been compressed to different strains, then lightly annealed, and the crystallographic aspects of the recrystallization process along shear bands examined by local orientation measurement in TEM and SEM. The results clearly show the existence of a well-defined crystallographic relation between the local deformation substructure and the first recrystallized areas of uniform orientation. The first-formed nuclei always exhibit near 25–400(<111>–<112>) type misorientations, in the direction of highest growth, with respect to one of the two main groups of the deformation texture components. The rotation axes can be correlated with the slip plane normal of highest activity. As recrystallization proceeds, recrystallization twinning develops strongly and facilitates rapid growth; the first and higher generations of twins then tend to obscure the initial primary crystallographic relation between the shear bands and recrystallization nuclei .