The effect of anisotropy on transport phenomena in anisotropic porous media is studied in this paper. For convenience, a bank of circular cylinders which can be treated as an anisotropic porous medium is employed such that both Darcy-Forchheimer drag and effective thermal conductivity can be accurately determined. Two problems including a forced flow and a natural convection are illustrated to investigate the effect of anisotropy on fluid flow and heat transfer through a bank of circular cylinders. The solutions reveal that inclination of the cylinder bundle could give rise to an influence of more than 100% on the heat transfer rate for both forced convection and natural convection. Hence, the anisotropy of an anisotropic porous medium should not be ignored.