Trees are a hierarchical data structure with nodes connected by parent-child relationships. They can be traversed in different orders like preorder, inorder, and postorder. Tree traversal involves visiting each node by first traversing the left subtree, then visiting the root, and finally traversing the right subtree for preorder, or traversing the left subtree, visiting the root, and traversing the right subtree for inorder. Trees have properties like paths, roots, parents, children, leaves, and subtrees.