The albedo of plant canopies is treated as a problem in radiative transfer. We compare albedos calculated from an iterative multistream numerical model with those calculated with an analytic two-stream solution. With the assumption of a randomly homogeneous distribution of leaf positions and orientations and isotropic scattering by individual leaves the single-scattering albedo of the canopy can be found analytically. This single-scattering solution is incorporated into the two-stream solution and used to benchmark the multistream numerical model in the single-scattering limit. Relative errors so established in the multistream model are O(0.3%) or less. The two-stream model is also found to be remarkably accurate, with the error in multiply scattered radiation O(5%) or less, corresponding to absolute errors in visible albedo of <0.001 and near-infrared albedo of ≤0.01. Thus the two-stream model should be adequate for many purposes, such as climate modeling, provided the assumptions of homogeneous canopy and isotropic scattering are not too unrealistic. ¿American Geophysical Union 1987