diff --git a/Documentation/powerpc/booting-without-of.txt b/Documentation/powerpc/booting-without-of.txt
index d42d98107d49..c169299716b1 100644
--- a/Documentation/powerpc/booting-without-of.txt
+++ b/Documentation/powerpc/booting-without-of.txt
@@ -626,6 +626,14 @@ So the node content can be summarized as a start token, a full path,
 a list of properties, a list of child nodes, and an end token. Every
 child node is a full node structure itself as defined above.
 
+NOTE: The above definition requires that all property definitions for
+a particular node MUST precede any subnode definitions for that node.
+Although the structure would not be ambiguous if properties and
+subnodes were intermingled, the kernel parser requires that the
+properties come first (up until at least 2.6.22).  Any tools
+manipulating a flattened tree must take care to preserve this
+constraint.
+
 4) Device tree "strings" block
 
 In order to save space, property names, which are generally redundant,