We give an explicit description of the free objects in the quasivariety of adequate semigroups, as sets of labelled directed trees under a natural combinatorial multiplication. The morphisms of the free adequate semigroup onto the free ample semigroup and into the free inverse semigroup are realised by a combinatorial ‘folding’ operation which transforms our trees into Munn trees. We use these results to show that free adequate semigroups and monoids are 𝒥-trivial and never finitely generated as semigroups, and that those which are finitely generated as (2,1,1)-algebras have decidable word problem.
