There is a house with a planting of 5 or 6 of these trees a few miles from me near Santa Cruz. One day I was driving by, and the homeowner was out in his garden and I stopped to ask about the trees. He introduced himself as a retired nurseryman named Allan Korth, and said that he'd originally seen the tree growing in a garden in San Jose. He asked that homeowner where he got the tree, and was told that it was found near the epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Mr. Korth grew some cuttings from that tree which were later shared with Saratoga Horticultural Foundation, who in turn distributed plants to other wholesale nurseries. He said that he named it for the spike in the Richter scale. It's often found as just 'Loma Prieta'.

I was told that only upright tip growth cuttings produce an upright weeping tree. Cuttings from the weeping branches basically produce a ground cover.

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