if its blooming.. its not dead ...

otherwise.. what babs said ...

any out of the ordinary winter event that could have killed the buds??

ken

Might be getting old & losing vigor.....

Insufficient Data. What Zone are you in? Did you have a bad winter? Is this one of the fancy cultivars?

In some areas these are notorious for losing branches in the winter. Fortunately they can sometimes grow back from the trunk.

Wait until July, do the scratch test, mark the branches with no signs of green to be pruned off.

Thank you all for the input. I am absolutely a novice when it comes to trees.

The back story is last spring we had normal buds and leaves until August. During a heat wave roughly the same branches that currently are without any buds lost their leaves. I was hoping that this spring everything would recover but thus far the same branches seem to be effected.

We are in zone 7a.

Even the wussy cultivars should be fine in Zone 7. Is it in full sun? Was there a drought associated with the heat wave? Are you super concerned about graceful form?

Redbud can get verticillium wilt on some branches, which kills the branch.

It is in full sun and yes there was a drought associated with the heat wave. Beng12 what would I do to determine if there is wilt?

This may or may not work for you, but if you are able to carefully scratch off a small bit of bark on an affected branch, look for brown streaking in what should be green cambium. If you do a search for swomething like "verticillium wilt streaking" or some such string of words, then go to images, you will be presented with many examples of what I'm trying to explain. Given the datum that these limbs lost their foliage during a hot spell, it seems equally possible that that factor may have been involved.

For my area-east-central WI-these things are far from bullet-proof. It is commonplace to lose a limb or three.....and whole tree death is sure not uncommon.

reddpoint, nothing to do about vert-wilt, tho it's rarely ever fatal.

I hope your redbud recovers - looks like it is a lovely tree. That cherry tree is beautiful. Do you know what kind it is?