Almighty Dad | A stay at home dad blog

There are hundreds of trees all over the world which have grown from seeds that orbited the moon in 1971 with the Apollo 14 Astronauts.  It’s a historical oddity that was big news when the plantings occurred but that has since faded into obscurity.  The story goes like this:  Stuart Roosa, Apollo 14 astronaut, had a career as a smoke jumper for the US Forest Service before he became an astronaut.  When he learned he was going to be on the Apollo 14 mission, his love for trees compelled him to talk to the Forest Service about taking seeds into space to see if the trip would have any impact on their growth once they returned to earth.  The Forest Service was excited about the experiment.  NASA, too, thought it was a good idea, at least from a PR perspective.  They recognized the potential for a powerful marketing opportunity, the plan being to distribute the seeds around the country for the bicentennial celebration in 1976.  The seeds went into space on Jan 31, 1971 and orbited the moon 34 times with Stuart, before returning to earth.         

Upon Return:         

Upon returning to earth, Stuart planted several of the seeds — some in Gulfport, Mississippi and Placerville, California.  He was happy to see that the trees grew normally.  Space seemed to have no effect on them (except the slash pine species, of which none germinated).  That’s when the Forest Service started distributing the seeds to anybody who showed interest.  The first seeds went to state governments.  Unfortunately, not every state got trees since the tree species were mostly western and southern varieties, but those who could plant trees did plant trees.  Demand was high.  The 500-600 moon seeds were quickly snatched up.  Seeds were planted in other countries, too. Switzerland, Brazil, and Japan (given to the Emperor as a gift) also got seeds.  Apparently it was a big deal for a few years.  Then, despite plaques identifying most of them as moon trees and the pride towns and states took in having them, they were forgotten.         

Hide and Seek:         

This is where Joan Goble comes into the story.  She’s a third grade teacher in Cannelton, Indiana.  In 1997, when she had her class studying trees, one of her students discovered a tree at Comp Koch Girl Scout Camp with a sign identifying it as a Moon Tree.  They’d never heard of a Moon Tree before so they e-mailed NASA about it.  Dave Williams, planetary scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, had never heard of Moon Trees either, but he looked into it and uncovered the story.  In fact, he kept researching and started to uncover more Moon Trees scattered about the country.     It turns out that neither the Forest Service nor NASA kept records of where the trees were planted.  That makes finding them both difficult and exiting.  Williams maintains a website where he keeps track of the Moon Trees people find.  It’s hosted on NASA servers here.  So far, he’s found about 60 trees including 20 or so dead ones.  If you find a Moon Tree, now you’ll know what it is.  Happy hunting!         

* This article is based on an article I read in the 2011 Harris’s Farmer’s Almanac. 

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