The two surfaces of a 40% cold-rolled tricrystal of aluminium were scratched to stimulate recrystallization nucleation. Serial sectioning combined with electron backscatter diffraction was used to characterize the nuclei in three dimensions. It was found that the largest nuclei have a 40 degrees < 1 1 1 > relationship to the matrix, but there are also many nuclei of this orientation relationship which do not grow to large sizes. It is shown that local variations in the deformation microstructure determine where preferential growth occurs. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of Acta Materialia Inc. All rights reserved.