The element can be either a node or a leaf of the tree. If it is a node then ther are 4 descendants (LL, HL, LH and HH). If it is a leaf there are no descendants.
The tree is bidirectional. Each element in the tree structure has a "parent", which is the subband from which the element was obtained by decomposition. The only exception is the root element which has no parent (i.e.it's null), for obvious reasons.