In the early 1990s when this story and song came about I was poking around the West Branch starting at Ajo Road and north almost to Starr Pass where I worked at Desert Survivors Nursery. It actually starts near Irvington Road and it meanders through a lot of private property, so you just can’t go wandering along it like a certain naive plant geek did back then. Yikes, I wish someone had told me! Anyway, I still love singing this song and thank you so much for listening.
There are some cool flora and fauna found on the west branch, so it might be fun for you to do a search on line for the West Branch of the Santa Cruz…recommended.
The genus Heuchera is found in the saxifrage family, Saxifracaceae, with 80 other genera that includes the genus Saxifraga and its 400 species. Yikes!...
photo credits: Marian and Bridgitte
The distinctive odor of canyon ragweed (Ambrosia ambrosioides) is so Sonoran Desert. Hey, burs in your flip flops is a very Sonoran Desert thing...