On trees covering chains or stars

In this paper, in the context of the “dessins d’enfants” theory, we give a combinatorial criterion for a plane tree to cover a tree from the classes of “chains” or “stars.” We also discuss some applications of this result that are related to the arithmetical theory of torsion on curves. Translated from Fundamentalnaya i Prikladnaya Matematika, Vol. 13, No. 6, pp. 207–215, 2007.