In 1971, Apollo 14 carried roughly 500 tree seeds around the Moon. 55 years later, a NASA scientist has tracked down dozens of the surviving “Moon trees” still growing across America

In 1971, Apollo 14 carried roughly 500 tree seeds around the Moon as part of a side project connected to astronaut Stuart Roosa and the US Forest Service. The seeds travelled with Roosa while astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell explored the lunar surface. After the mission, the seeds were planted across the United States. They grew in schoolyards, parks, state capitol grounds and other locations. However, NASA did not maintain a complete list of where the trees were planted. Decades later, NASA scientist Dave Williams began searching for them after receiving a question from an Indiana teacher.

A question from an Indiana classroom began the search

The story of the Moon Trees might have remained unknown if not for a question from a third-grade teacher. In 1990, Indiana teacher Joan Goble contacted NASA after her students heard about a Moon Tree growing nearby. The students wanted to know whether the story was true. Her question reached Dave Williams, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Williams did not know what a Moon Tree was at the time.


He asked people at Goddard about the trees. He also spoke with people who had worked on the Apollo program. Nobody could give him a clear answer. Williams then discovered that the story was real. The problem was that the trees had not been properly documented after they were distributed. He decided to begin looking for them.

The seeds travelled with Apollo 14

The Moon Tree project began with Stuart Roosa, the Apollo 14 command module pilot. Before joining NASA, Roosa had worked for the US Forest Service as a smokejumper. In the early 1950s, he parachuted into wildfires in the Pacific Northwest and California. His background in fighting forest fires connected him with Ed Cliff, the chief of the Forest Service at the time. Cliff contacted Roosa about taking tree seeds on the Apollo 14 mission.

Forest Service geneticist Stan Krugman prepared the seeds. They came from five tree species:

• Loblolly pine
• Sycamore
• Sweetgum
• Redwood
• Douglas fir

The seeds were sorted and classified before being sealed inside a small metal canister. The canister was placed in Roosa's personal kit. On February 5, 1971, Roosa carried the seeds into lunar orbit. He remained in the command module while Shepard and Mitchell went to the Moon's surface to collect rock samples. The seeds therefore travelled around the Moon even though they never landed on the lunar surface.

The seeds almost did not survive

The seeds faced a problem after returning to Earth. At the quarantine and decontamination facility in Houston, the bag containing the seeds burst. The seeds scattered inside the chamber. They were also exposed directly to vacuum. For some time, the Forest Service did not know whether the seeds could still grow.

There is also some uncertainty about the original number of seeds. The figure of roughly 500 is commonly used in accounts of the mission. Other NASA and Forest Service accounts describe Krugman working with a number closer to a couple of thousand before the seeds were sorted and selected.

Forest Service nurseries in Mississippi and California planted the seeds despite the problem. Most of them germinated. The seedlings did not show an obvious difference from trees grown from seeds that had never travelled into space. By the middle of the 1970s, several hundred seedlings were ready to be distributed.

Moon Trees were planted across America

The seedlings were mainly distributed in 1975 and 1976. The timing connected the plantings with America's bicentennial celebrations. The trees were sent to different locations. Some were planted on state capitol grounds. Others went to universities, national landmarks and schoolyards. Some were also planted outside the United States.

A Moon Tree was planted near the White House. Another was planted at Washington Square in Philadelphia, near Independence Hall. Other trees were distributed across the country, including locations from Mississippi to Oregon. The problem was that there was no central record of their locations.

Local communities often held planting ceremonies. Some trees received dedication plaques. Over time, however, records were lost. Plaques were damaged or removed. People who knew about the plantings left their jobs or moved away. In some places, the trees became ordinary parts of the local landscape. People could see them without knowing that they had travelled around the Moon.

Dave Williams asked the public for help

Williams began building a record of the Moon Trees himself. He created a NASA webpage explaining what he had learned. At the bottom of the page, he asked people to contact him if they knew about a Moon Tree. The response grew over time.

People sent information from different parts of the country. A park ranger reported a tree in a state forest. A university archivist found an old newspaper report about a campus planting. A homeowner discovered that a sycamore nearby had a small brass plaque hidden by ivy. Each report gave Williams another possible location to investigate.

By 2019, his registry had confirmed more than 80 surviving Moon Trees. Williams has continued to add information when people send him new leads. His work effectively created a record that had not been made when the original trees were distributed.

Stuart Roosa's family continued the connection

Stuart Roosa died in 1994, but interest in the trees continued. His son, Jack Roosa, has taken part in Moon Tree dedications and has also searched for trees connected to his father. The Apollo 14 launch remained an important memory for him. He has spoken about the experience of watching his father leave Earth and described the feeling as something he had not experienced before or since. The Moon Trees therefore became part of the Roosa family's connection to the Apollo program as well as a record of the Forest Service's role in the mission.

Artemis I repeated the experiment with records

The Moon Tree story continued more than five decades after Apollo 14. In 2022, NASA sent more than 2,000 tree seeds and seedlings around the Moon aboard the uncrewed Artemis I mission. The second Moon Tree effort used a different approach to record-keeping. NASA kept track of the seedlings and their destinations. They have since been planted at more than 236 documented locations across the United States.

Universities, schools and museums have also used the trees in educational programs. Some have created lesson plans and Moon Tree clubs connected to the plants. The Artemis I effort repeated the basic idea of sending plant material around the Moon, but this time the locations were documented.

Why the Moon Trees matter today?

The Moon Trees are connected to several parts of space and environmental history. They show how a small experiment linked NASA, the Apollo program and the US Forest Service. They also show what can happen when historical records are not maintained.

The first generation of Moon Trees was spread across America without a complete central database. The locations were later recovered through public memory, newspaper records, local archives and physical clues such as plaques. Williams' search turned the trees into a record that could be updated.

The story also shows how a question from a classroom can lead to a long research project. Joan Goble's students wanted to know whether a tree associated with the Moon was real. That question led Williams to investigate a part of the Apollo program he had not previously known about. Today, some of the trees that began their journey with Apollo 14 are still growing. Their history is now being recorded alongside the newer trees connected to Artemis I.