Trees ... A tragedy

At first I wasn't going to work any more on the tree that I had in the scene.  But after some unwrapping and texturing difficulties in Mudbox, I decided to take the tree further and add leaves.

I had done some research and looked up Arizona Trees and had chosen a Black Walnut.  Using reference, I made my tree a black walnut.

This was the result of about 5-6 hours work.  A good portion of the branches were hand created and placed.   I placed about 80% of the leaves manually, with the last 20% I used particles to fill in the tree.  This was a crazy amount of work that was fairly tedious.  

I posted this tree on CGtalk and got some comments back:   'Wrong kind of tree!  Doesn't look like a desert."  It was suggested to make the tree look more scraggled and thin, less leaves and shorter.  Maybe swap out for cactus.

This was great criticism.  I can't believe I had missed it, but my heart dropped.... that was 6 hours of work!  I went into the weekend and did some research....