Those UVs look pretty good. Sometimes, to fight distortion, you just need to play around with the different mapping modes to find one that works well for the shape you have.
As tbd was saying, many renders let you have more than one map. For example, I use specular\gloss maps a lot in my work. A gloss map lets you control which areas are more or less "shiny" by making very shiny areas white, and less shiny areas black.
This is a really great tutorial for understanding the different kinds of maps:
http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorial...ect/leaf_1.asp
The tutorial is aimed at max and photoshop, but the concepts are easily applied to other renderers.