NEWS BRIEFS N WHAT’S GOING ON

24 A TREE?

orestry Extension been a smokejumper in his trying unsuccessfully to get the agents are used to field- youth, and he and Forest Service cuttings to root. Now he intends F ing odd requests, but officials arranged the seeds’ flight to plant the seeds after condition- this one had Scott Leavengood to the moon. ing them in the freezer according stumped. A man in Phoenix, Afterward, the seeds were to Leavengood’s instructions. , named Michael Simon germinated, and in 1975 and Leavengood wishes him had heard there was a “moon 1976 some 450 seedlings were luck. “Generating a Douglas-fir tree” growing somewhere on the given to state forestry organiza- from a cutting is a very difficult grounds of the OSU College of tions throughout the country to task, even for a horticultural pro- Forestry. Could he get cuttings? be planted as part of the nation’s fessional,” he says. Sprouting a Leavengood, an OSU Forest bicentennial celebration. seed is somewhat easier, but it’s Products Extension agent in Leavengood discovered that still tricky. “I’m hoping he’ll keep Washington County, asked a few one of the moon trees, a Douglas- me posted.” questions. No, said Simon, it was fir seedling, had been planted on not a tree grown on the moon, the east lawn of Peavy Hall in The story of the moon trees, but a tree planted from seeds that 1976. Today the tree is a healthy including their present where- Maybe it’s been to had orbited the moon in 1971 40-foot-tall specimen, apparently abouts, is posted on the NASA web the moon, but you’d with of none the worse for its wanderings site, http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ the 14 team. Simon was as a seed. Leavengood took cut- planetary/lunar/moon_tree.html never know it. This trying to get his 16-year-old tings and cones from the tree and healthy Douglas-fir daughter interested in science, sent them to Simon. is one of the moon and he thought propagating a The project did not have the

seedlings planted would be a good hoped-for effect on Simon’s father-daughter project. daughter. “She didn’t find moon across the United Leavengood did some trees exciting at all,” he confesses. States in 1976. investigating. Stuart Roosa had But Simon went ahead anyway,

WINTER 2000 MAGAZINE FOR THE FRIENDS AND ALUMNI OF THE COLLEGE OF FORESTRY

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