This small tree is widespread across southeastern states, especially in thin rocky woods and thickets on subxeric base-rich soils. Within regions where acid sandy soils predominate, it is generally concentrated in strips along roads made with limestone gravel. Also, it is often planted in Ky. and it has spread locally onto the deeper soils of residential areas. Cercis is the only simple-leaved legume in eastern North America, and allied with the tropical genus Bauhinia. Cercideae are all woody plants and lack nitrogen-fixation. The closest relatives of North American Cercis species are those in the relatively dry Mediterranean region (C. siliquastrum L.) and the western Himalayas (C. griffithii Boiss), not the more mesophytic species of eastern Asia. With fossil evidence, there appears to have been an arid woodland connection with Cercis from central Asia across to western North America in the Miocene Era (Fritsch & Cruz 2012, Fritsch et al. 2018, Li et al. 2021).