Shrubs or trees. Leaves alternate, simple, entire, veins palmate, base cordate to truncate or cuneate, apex acute to attenuate or emarginate; stipules caducous, small, scalelike or membranous. Flowers zygomorphic, bisexual, purplish red, pink, or white, in soli­tary racemes or subumbellate clusters on branches of current year or older branches or trunks, flowering before or as leaves expand; bracts scalelike, often imbricate, aggregated at base of racemes; bracteoles minute or absent. Calyx shortly campanulate, slightly oblique, apex unequally 5-toothed; teeth broadly triangular. Petals 5, appearing papilionaceous, but with standard smallest and inside other petals. Stamens 10, free, included; filaments often hairy in lower part; anthers dorsifixed, opening lengthwise. Ovary shortly stipitate; ovules 2-10; style filiform; stigma capitate. Legumes compressed, narrowly oblong to broadly linear, usually narrowly winged along ventral suture, indehiscent or dehiscent, both ends acuminate or obtuse. Seeds 2 to many, compressed, suborbicular, without endosperm.

Cercis siliquastrum Linnaeus and C. canadensis Linnaeus are sometimes cultivated in China.

Eleven species: four confined to North America, one in E and S Europe, one in C Asia; five species (all endemic) in China.

(Authors: Chen Dezhao (陈德昭 Chen Te-chao), Zhang Dianxiang (张奠湘); Supee Saksuwan Larsen, Michael A. Vincent)