The Apollo Moon Tree of Corvallis

Growing near this spot is a tree with a genuinely unusual biography. Its seed orbited the Moon.

Forest Service researcher Stuart Roosa carried roughly five hundred tree seeds aboard Apollo Fourteen in February of nineteen seventy-one as part of a scientific experiment. The seeds, including Douglas fir, loblolly pine, sycamore, sweetgum, and redwood, traveled to lunar orbit and back to test whether spaceflight would alter germination. It did not. The seeds sprouted normally, and the seedlings were distributed across the United States as bicentennial gifts in nineteen seventy-six. Hundreds of Moon Trees were planted at schools, parks, and state capitols. Many went untracked for decades until a NASA scientist catalogued surviving specimens in the late nineteen nineties. This Oregon tree is one of them, grown from a seed that circled the Moon and came home to take root.