Description from Flora of China
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)