After calling, say, org-element-adopt-elements, do I (or rather my code) have to do anything to make the modified tree apply to the Org document/ buffer that the tree came from?
I can see that the tree is modified but it isn't reflected in the buffer it came from, and furthermore calling org-element-interpret-data on the modified tree at that stage results in an error: "org-element-headline-interpreter: Wrong type argument: wholenump, nil" so I'm guessing that, actually, something is wrong with the tree at that point, which may explain why no changes are available in the buffer if they should just show up automagically.