A comparison was made between the efficiency of micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography (MECC) and reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) to separate a mixture of plant phenolics. Of a range of buffers 6 mM borate/10 mM phosphate/100 mM SDS at pH 8.5 was the most effective in separating a complex mixture of phenolics using MECC. Using this buffer the elution order and resolution was different from that obtained by HPLC using a reversed phase C18 column. These results illustrate how MECC and RP-HPLC are complimentary when examining complex mixtures such as those obtained from plant extracts. MECC using these conditions was applied to the examination of phenolics from leaf tissue ofEucalyptus margmata(jarrah).