Conceptual framework linking growth rate to plant size and traits. (A) Shows how the distribution of mass in a typical plant varies with size. (B) Equations describing the rates of biomass growth, and growth in various dimensions of the plant. In the first line the symbol means “sum” across tissues, where . Gray numbers indicate equation numbers referred to in the main text. Insets show how the different metrics change intrinsically with plant height, when applying the “functional-balance” model in Table 4. Colors highlight where the same metric appears repeatedly in different equations. For a list of variable names, see Table 3.