In this chapter the term of an end point of a continuum is always used in the sense of a point of (Menger-Urysohn) order , i.e., is an end point of provided that . For dendrites this concept coincides with one of an end point in the classical sense, but not with the notion of an end point of an arc-like continuum as defined e.g. in [Bing 1951, p. 660].
Given a dendrite , we denote by the set of all end
points of and by the set of all its
ramification points
(i.e., points of order at least 3). Various structural as
well as mapping characterizations of dendrites are collected
in [Charatonik et al. 1998, Theorems 1.1 and 1.2, p. 228 and 230,
respectively]. See also
[Charatonik et al. 2000].