There is rising interest in modeling the noncentrosomal cortical microtubule cytoskeleton of plant cells, particularly its organization into ordered arrays and the mechanisms that facilitate this organization. In this review, we discuss quantitative models of this highly complex and dynamic structure both at a cellular and molecular level. We report differences in methodologies and assumptions of different models as well as their controversial results. Our review provides insights for future studies to resolve these controversies, in addition to underlining the common results between various models. We also highlight the need to compare the results from simulation and mathematical models with quantitative data from biological experiments in order to test the validity of the models and to further improve them. It is our hope that this review will serve to provide guidelines for how to combine quantitative and experimental techniques to develop higher‐level models of the plant cytoskeleton in the future. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc