http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/myisam-storage-engine...
See "Foreign key support" in MyISAM
Also, in my experience a lot of people do not always use the underlying database constraints even in InnoDB.
Not sure if that was the intent of the authors, but just so that others may understand that it could be more than just "PHP land". Might be a little closer to "MySQL land".