Bands on trees (Q1823326)

It is well known that any tree with a finite number of endpoints is the underlying space of a topological band (Idempotent Semigroups) with zero. In fact, it is realized as the continuous homomorphic image of a product of min intervals. In this paper the inverse question is considered: must every band with zero on a finite tree be of this type, i.e. Given a band with zero on a finite tree S, does there exist a finite band D such that S is the continuous homomorphic image of \(D\times I\) where I is a min interval. The answer is shown to be yes if S has an identity element, and an example is given to the contrary if S lacks an identity element.