Puppet warping a polygon in Illustrator with internal line-art

Question

I am attempting to warp a leaf symbol that I made, but the individual elements aren't maintaining their relative positions.

I select, then add three warp pins (have tried more, and adding at the intersections):

I warp the leaf:

This is what I get no matter what I try:

I feel like there's something fundamental I'm missing, or just misunderstanding about the puppet warp tool, but I can't figure it out. I've tried:

1. Grouping the elements differently (lines grouped together, or nested). Although perhaps I am not grouping them "properly", as I know Illustrator can be picky about how things are grouped (Pathfinder, etc).
2. Ungrouping all of the elements in the symbol, so there is only one group (the symbol container itself).
3. Joining the paths (although, this creates a contiguous line, which adds more than the art should have).
4. Doing the same thing to the polygon/line not as a symbol.

Normally I'm pretty good with Illustrator's tools, but the Puppet Warp has always perplexed me due to idiosyncrasies like this.

Answer 1

There's no need to group. Select all the inner paths (i.e. the veins of the leaf), then do Object > Expand, then open the Pathfinder and do Unite, then select all parts of the leaf, then apply the Puppet Warp and it will work. After this has been done you will find that a group has been applied automatically to all the selected elements in the Puppet Warp.