It appears that the zeta map which I used to answer Vince Vatter's initial questionVince Vatter's initial question and which I describe in my answer theremy answer there, see also page 50 of Jim Haglund's book, indeed solves also this problem:
As discussed in a comment above, the zeta map has the property that it sends
- the number of $0$'s in an "area sequence" $a = (a_1,\ldots,a_n)$ (item $u$ in Stanley's list, see also Property $D$ in my answer to the other questionmy answer to the other question) to the number of initial north (or up) steps, and
- the number of $i$'s for which all $i$'s appear before all $i+1$'s within $a$ to the number of returns to $0$ (excluding the very last return).
On the other hand, David's bijection between rooted planar trees and Dyck paths sends
- the number of children of the root to the number of $0$'s in the corresponding area sequence, and
- the number of crucial vertices in a tree (excluding the root which is always, except for $n=1$, crucial) to the number of $i$'s for which all $i$'s appear before all $i+1$'s within the corresponding area sequence.
Combining his bijection with the zeta map yields therefore a bijection between rooted planar trees and Dyck paths that sends the bistatistic
(number of crucial vertices, number of children of the root)
to the bistatistic
(number of returns to $0$, number of initial north steps).
To extend David's initial example of the $5$ rooted planar trees of size $4$, the $5$ area sequences corresponding to them (in the ordering $$(1,2), (2,1), (3,1), (2,2), (1,3)$$ as above) are $$010, 011, 012, 001, 000.$$ Applying the zeta map yields the area sequences $$011, 001, 000, 010, 012.$$ For those, the (sequence of the) number of returns to $0$ is $1,2,3,2,1$ and the (sequence of the) number of initial north steps is $2,1,1,2,3$. We thus obtain the same bistatistical sequence.
We thus proved that $\sum c(p,q,n)x^py^q$ is indeed equal to the Tutte polynomial $T_n(x,y)$.