Infrastructure · Data Structures
Forest
Topology of N independently-rooted trees with no shared apex
Definition
Mechanism
A topology consisting of two or more independently-rooted Trees with no shared apex. Each constituent tree can be traversed standalone; the Forest is the named collection. Distinct from a single tree with many branches: a Forest has *no shared root*, so removing any one tree does not affect the others. Found in random-forest ensembles (ML), disjoint-set forests (union-find CS), process forests (OS sessions), multi-repo organizations (git), federated solver trees across organizations, and biological forests (where cross-tree links exist but do not create a shared apex). Variation across descendants concerns whether the trees are strictly disjoint or share substrate (mycorrhizal biology, content-addressed commons) and whether merge/split operations are supported (union-find).
Invariants
- Multiplicity: a Forest contains at least two Trees; a single tree is not a forest.
- Apex-disjoint: no node is an ancestor of any node in a different constituent tree.
- Tree-wellformedness: each constituent is itself a valid Tree (rooted, acyclic).
Risks
Failure modes
None stated.
Relationships
Builds on
References
Branching reasoning topology
Nothing in this library builds on this pattern yet.
Reference
Data schema
{
"type": "object",
"required": [
"trees"
],
"properties": {
"trees": {
"type": "array",
"items": {
"type": "string"
},
"description": "Refs to the constituent Tree instances"
},
"cross_links": {
"type": "array",
"description": "Optional non-apex edges between trees (e.g., mycorrhizal / federated references)"
}
}
}