We introduce a convenient definition for weak cyclic operads, which is based on unrooted trees and Segal conditions. More specifically, we introduce a category Ξ of trees, which carries a tight relationship to the Moerdijk-Weiss category of rooted trees Ω. We prove a nerve theorem exhibiting colored cyclic operads as presheaves on Ξ which satisfy a Segal condition. Finally, we produce a Quillen model category whose fibrant objects satisfy a weak Segal condition, and we consider these objects as an up-to-homotopy generalization of the concept of cyclic operad. arXiv:1611.02591v3 [math.AT] 11 Aug 2018 1. The unrooted tree category Ξ The main goal of this section is to define a category of unrooted trees Ξ. We will begin with a formalism for general graphs, before defining the objects of Ξ in Definition 1.3. We give two distinct descriptions of the morphisms of Ξ in Definition 1.12 and Definition 1.13. Each has its own advantage: morphisms in the former sense (here called complete) immediately form a category, while morphisms in the latter sense are specified by a smaller set of data, and are easier to work with in most situations. We then embark on a sustained study of the nature of these morphisms; key tools are the notions of distance and a (minimal) path in a tree. Along the way, we recover the Moerdijk-Weiss dendroidal category Ω. Finally, in Proposition 1.32, we show that the two definitions of morphisms coincide.At the heart of this work is the notion of 'graph with legs'. One can choose several formalisms; for concreteness, let us say that an undirected graph with legs consists of two finite sets E and V and a function Nbhd : V → P(E) (the set of subsets of E). This data should satisfy one axiom, namely that, for each e ∈ E, |{v ∈ V | e ∈ Nbhd(v)}| ≤ 2.We will package the triple (E, V, Nbhd) into a single symbol G, and write Ed(G) = E and Vt(G) = V . Edges actually come in two types, namely interior edges Int(G) = {e ∈ E|e ∈ Nbhd(v) ∩ Nbhd(w) for some v = w} and the set of legs Legs(G) = Ed(G) \ Int(G) which are edges incident to at most one vertex. 3 If v is a vertex of G, we also write |v| for the valence of v, or the cardinality of the set Nbhd(v). Every graph has an underlying topological space, which can be described as follows. See the left hand side of Figure 3 for an example.Definition 1.1 (Space associated to a graph). Fix an with 0 < < 1, which we can use to scale the closed unit disc D in the complex plain C. Define3 If e ∈ Ed(G) is not incident to any vertex, then one should really think that e appears twice in Legs(G). Since we are only concerned with connected graphs for the bulk of this paper, only one graph (see Example 1.4) has an edge with this property, so we will just systematically single out that special case.