Structure of an R-tree node is defined as follows:

rtnodetype = record
$\hspace*{1in} Rec_{1},.... Rec_{k}: rectangle \\ \hspace*{1in} P_{1},....P_{k}: *rtnodetype \\ \hspace*{0.5in} end\\$
A polygon is stored only in one node, and the bounding box of the node must contain the polygon The storage efficiency or R-trees is better than that of k-d trees or quad-trees since a polygon is stored only once.

The insertion and deletion algorithms use the bounding boxes from the nodes to ensure that ''nearby'' elements are placed in the same leaf node (in particular, a new element will go into the leaf node that requires the least enlargement in its bounding box). Each entry within a leaf node stores two pieces of information; a way of identifying the actual data element (which, alternatively, may be placed directly in the node), and the bounding box of the data element.