What do you know about the Moon Trees?
Scattered among the many NASA's websites, we can find short backgrounds about what are the Moon trees. They are not real trees brought from the Moon, but rather they are trees that were grown up from seeds from our Earth that one of the astronauts carried in his journey to Moon.
NASA went to the Moon eleven times in manned missions, six of them were lunar landings during the period of the late 60's to1972.
In their missions and journeys to the Moon, astronauts were allowed to carry a small amount of personal objects and trinkets of their preferences (Personal Preference Kits).
In the Apollo 14 mission on January 31, 1971, Stuart Allen Roosa, one of the astronauts recall what they brought to Moon: "...coins, stamps or mission patches. Al Shepard took golf balls. On Gemini 3, John Young brought a corned beef sandwich." In other words, nothing of real importance like a book or a historic document.
The first generation of Moon Trees
But Roosa ─who stayed orbiting the Moon while the others "landed" and explored the Moon─ chose a particular set of items to carry to the Moon: "My father had an affinity for the outdoors," recalls Air Force Lt. Col. Jack Roosa, Stuart's son. "He often reminisced about the tall Ponderosa pine trees from his smoke jumping days." "My father chose trees," says Jack. "It was his way of paying tribute to the US Forest Service."
Apollo 14 was launched in the afternoon of January 31, 1971 on what was the third trip to the lunar surface. "NASA astronaut Stuart Roosa, a former U.S. Forest Service smoke jumper, took with him tree seeds from a Loblolly Pine, Sycamore, Sweet Gum, Redwood, and Douglas Fir." That selection marked a difference among the other "trinkets" of his companion astronauts. Tree seeds is a way of taking life to the Moon and back.
| Surprisingly, nearly all the seeds germinated successfully, and the Forest Service had some 420 to 450 seedlings after a few years (some from cuttings). At right, the sycamore (platanus occidentalis) planted Arbor Week, 1976, at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Alabama. |  |
 A rededication of one the Moon Trees by students of Camp Koch in 1976. |  Proud students under the shadow of a Moon Tree. |
 The University of Arizona Moon Tree is a sycamore (platanus occidentalis) planted on 30 April 1976. |  Dedication of the Sycamore tree at the Arizona University. |
Some trees were planted in Brazil, Switzerland, and presented to the Emperor of Japan, among others. However, no list was ever kept nor any systematic tracking made of the disposition of all the trees.
After Roosa's return to Earth, the original seeds were germinated by the U.S. Forest Service and the result was "Moon trees." American Moon trees at state capitols and university campuses across the nation. A Moon Sycamore also shades Roosa's grave at Arlington National Cemetery.
Second generation of Moon Trees
Retired NASA Astronaut Vance Brand, (center), assisted by Steve Schmidt, director of NASA Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility and Mayor James Ledford of the City of Palmdale, Calif., planted a "Moon Tree" sycamore sapling at the AERO Institute in the Palmdale Civic Center. The sapling is a second-generation tree, germinated from seeds from first-generation "Moon trees" that were grown from seeds taken on the Apollo 14 mission to the Moon in 1971.
But, are there really trees in the Moon?
That's what a renaissance writer thought, and wrote a successful story about it.
By the year 1638, a work by Francis Godwin (1562-1633) was published posthumously. The title: The Man in the Moone, or a Discourse of a Voyage thither, by Domingo Gonsales. The importance of this work is that he was among the early writers of science fiction ─regarded as the first piece of English science-fiction─ but that he was also among the early supporters of the Copernican system. This pseudonymous work is narrated by a Spaniard named Domingo Gonsales.
In this story, Domingo Gonsales flies to the Moon attached to a flock of trained birds, where he finds an advanced civilization of serene lunar beings.
According to Godwin, the Moon characteristics such as land are similar to our Earth's, but huger: everything is ten, twenty or even thirty times higher than ours, their trees are at least three times higher, and more than five times thicker. The people are "most of the time twice as high," their homes between forty rooms fifty feet high, the entries at least thirty feet high. Her prince, Pylonas, is the highest of all and the taller they are the more mentally gifted they are and live longest. [...] The Moon is not completely dark. His language, as is partly musical, and difficult to learn. There is no evil, and food grows everywhere. The women are so beautiful that once a man knows a woman no longer wants to hear from others.
But people believing in life, trees, and nature in the Moon goes further back than Godwin in time. It is said that Anaxagoras and Democritus believed that there were mountains, valleys and fields in the Moon. The Pythagoreans believed that the Moon had trees and animals fifteen times larger than Earth's animals, and that the Moon's color is the same of Earth, for it was crowded and full of people like this our Earth.
If you like this article, you will also enjoy reading about the several messages sent from our Earth to alien civilizations in nearby stars. Take a look at:
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