[5] They are characterised by simple, rounded to heart-shaped leaves and pinkish-red flowers borne in the early spring on bare leafless shoots, on both branches and trunk ("cauliflory").

The genus contains ten species, native to warm temperate regions of North America, southern Europe, western and central Asia, and China.

It is found in Iberia, southern France, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, and Asia Minor, and forms a low tree with a flat spreading head.

These clades were also inferred from a distance-based analysis of Cercis in the United States with isozyme data as reported in an unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Ballenger 1992).

On the basis of these studies, Cercis is treated as comprising three species, with the Colorado Plateau and all Arizona specimens recognized as C. orbiculata, distinct from C. occidentalis from California and C. canadensis from eastern North America.

The chain-flowered redbud (Cercis racemosa) from western China is unusual in the genus in having its flowers in pendulous 10 cm (4 in) racemes, as in a Laburnum, rather than short clusters.

[citation needed] The wood is medium weight, somewhat brittle, of light tan color with a noticeably large heartwood area of darker brown, tinged with red.