What are Moon Trees?
Moon trees are trees grown from seeds that were taken to the moon and back on Apollo 14 in January 31, 1971. Stuart Roosa, Command Module pilot for the mission brought along a canister full of Sycamore, Loblolly Pine, Redwood, Sweet gum, and Douglass Fir. This was part of a joint project between NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and the USFS (United States Forestry Service). Roosa had between 400 to 500 seeds with him in canisters on the command module which orbited the moon those first few days of February 1971. The plan was to see if being in space, in the Moon's orbit, would cause these trees to grow differently than trees which had never been in space.
Upon returning to Earth the seeds went under decontamination. The canister burst, however, and the seeds were thought to be not usable for the project anymore. Stan Krugman of the Forestry Service went ahead with trying to germinate the seeds and to everyone's surprise nearly all of them germinated! Most of these trees were then sent out between 1975 and 1976 to Forestry Services and other places in the USA as part of our nation's Bicentennial Celebration. Some of the trees were sent far away to places such as Switzerland and even Japan. Apparently the exact location of all of the Moon Trees
is not known. Dr. Dave Williams of NASA's National Space
Science Data Center helped us find information about the
Moon Trees and has his own website devoted to finding all of
the Moon Trees. He is hoping to locate all of the trees that
are still living, first and second generation trees so that
the research which began over thirty years ago can be
continued.
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