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I am a git novice trying to sort through the concepts and terms. The git glossary says a tree is equivalent to a directory and a directory is what you get with ls. Are they interchangeable terms? Or are "tree" and "directory" to be used in different contexts or to refer to separate (though related) things?
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Structure. The directory is structured in the form of a tree. It also has a root directory, and every file in the system has a unique path. A directory within a tree-structured directory may contain files or subdirectories.
There is a subtle difference in meaning. A directory is a singular thing -- a folder, a collection of files -- whereas a working tree means a tree like structure of files and directories that are collectively referenced.
A directory tree is a hierarchy of directories that consists of a single directory, called the parent directory or top level directory, and all levels of its subdirectories (i.e., directories within it).
A directory structure/system/tree is simply a layout of directories on your computer. Taking a big step back, the early computer designers realized that lumping together every single file on your computer would create a massive jumble and make it impossible to find anything. So they wisely created the directory.
The short answer: yes, a tree is a directory and a directory is a tree.
The long answer: A tree is an object that contains a list of blobs, the names to attach to the blobs, and other trees and the names to attach to them. http://book.git-scm.com/1_the_git_object_model.html has a pretty good explanation of the different object types in the git model; I would suggest reading it!
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