What you will learn in Building a plant from air

1. 1. Where does a tree come from?

   A willow, a pot of soil and five years — weighed before and after, with the soil's change predicted first.

2. 2. Where it happens

   Thylakoid stacking as a surface-area answer, with a mitochondrion beside it at the same scale.

3. 3. Catching light

   Absorption and action spectra drawn together, with the leaf's reflection beside them — and why a leaf looks green.

4. 4. Making ATP again

   Chemiosmosis in the thylakoid, driven alongside the mitochondrion's — the same machine in two organelles.

5. 5. Fixing carbon

   The Calvin cycle traced as eighteen carbon atoms, three turns, one net triose.

6. 6. RuBisCO's flaw, and two fixes

   Photorespiration rising with temperature, C₄ and CAM as two independent solutions, and a leaf's gas exchange measured in the light and in the dark.