Curator: 
Natalie Barnes
Responsible Official: Last Revised: [NAB] |
Return to Previous Article
The Moon Trees
By David Williams
On December 1, 1996 NSSDC received a letter from a third grade teacher, Joan Goble, in Cannelton, Indiana. She talked about a project her class was doing on a "Moon tree" growing at a nearby Girl Scout camp. The Moon trees, she told us, were apparently grown from seeds that were taken to the Moon on one of the Apollo missions. Joan wondered if we knew which mission had taken them, where other trees were planted, and anything else about the Moon trees. No one here at NSSDC had ever heard of the Moon trees, but an inquiry to the NASA History Office and a few telephone calls brought together most of the story.
It turned out that Stuart Roosa, the Command Module Pilot for the Apollo 14 mission, was a former U.S. Forest Service smokejumper. In cooperation with the Forest Service, Roosa carried about 500 tree seeds in his personal kit as he orbited the Moon in February 1971. Upon his return, the seeds were germinated and grown into seedlings. Some of the seedlings were used to study the effects of weightlessness on seeds (as expected, no effects were found), but most were given away to state forestry organizations to be planted as part of the national Bicentennial celebration. The first of these was planted in May of 1975 in Philadelphia, most others were planted in 1976. One of these trees, a sycamore, was planted here at Goddard Space Flight Center and still thrives in front of the Visitor's Center.
Since this was such an interesting yet generally unknown story, and since material from the NASA History Office gave locations of a couple of Moon tree sites and a cursory search on the Web yielded a few others, a decision was made to create a Web page with information on the Moon trees. This page can be viewed at:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/moon_tree.html.
Since no formal list of Moon tree locations was ever kept, on our Web page we have asked anyone who knows the location of a Moon tree to send us a message. So far we have received some 30 e-mail messages from people all over the country telling us of Moon trees, some including newspaper clippings or photographs of the trees, or personal stories and recollections. We've captured this on our Web pages, which now include 38 Moon tree locations and the sites of seven second generation trees, plus links to other pertinent information.
Sadly, Stuart Roosa passed away in 1994. We like to think of the Moon trees as a tribute to him and to the Apollo program as the trees continue to grow, reaching back towards the Moon they once circled.
Return to Top of Page