Many scattered trees grown from seeds that orbited the moon.
In 1971, Command Module Pilot Stuart Roosa brought a canister of 500 seeds in his luggage aboard Apollo 14. Consisting of loblolly pine, sycamore, sweetgum, redwood, and douglas fir, these seeds spent 9 days off-planet. After the flight, they were sent to a forest research station and germinated, with an aim to study the effects of weightlessness and space travel on seeds. There were no obvious changes from the control group that stayed on Earth.
In 1976, these saplings were distributed across the US (and world) as part of the bicentennial celebration. They were planted in parks, at universities, and a government buildings - including a loblolly pine (now dead) on the White House lawn. Then NASA forgot about them.
Any documentation of the actual locations of the moon trees was either not kept or was lost, anyone who remembered the moon tree program retired or died, and it wasn't until the internet that any attempt at reconstructing their locations was made. This has been done haphazardly, backwards - with locals identifying moon trees from plaques and local records and writing in with locations.
There are only 60~ confirmed living moon trees, out of 400~ seedlings.
Do you have a moon tree in your hometown? As requested at the NASA page linked below - please send a message to dave.williams@nasa.gov.
A NASA page with moon tree locations and the aforementioned plea.
