American Sycamore Moon Tree Platanus occidentalis 100 Seeds

In 1971 the astronaut Stuart Roosa flew to the moon on the Apollo 14 mission. He piloted the command module which orbited the moon. Roosa had previously been an engineer and he had also worked as a smokejumper for the forest service. He had the idea to bring seeds of forest trees with him to the moon and then plant them when he returned to the earth. He did just that and when he launched to the moon, he brought with him 500 seeds of several species of American trees. The seeds were planted after he returned and the resulting plants were planted in a number of locations. Some of the seeds were those of the native American sycamore, a tree that is native to Florida as well as much of the eastern United States. It is a large, durable and heat and flood resistant tree. One of the moon tree sycamores was planted at Kennedy Space Center on Cape Canaveral in Florida. Another plant was planted on the campus of the University of Florida, which is in northern Florida. The plant at the University of Florida survived and is now a large tree that produces seeds. The plants that are grown from the seeds of a moon tree are known as half moon trees. The seeds on this listing are from the moon tree on the campus of the University of Florida. They will produce trees that will be true half moon trees and would have been descended from a seed that had traveled to the moon. The large tree in the pics is the moon tree sycamore that is at the University of Florida. The smaller trees are the moon tree garden at Kennedy Space Center. Those trees are descended from the moon tree that was planted at the center. These trees are half moon trees. The original Kennedy Center moon tree sycamore was blown down by Hurricane Irma in 2017. 

The American Sycamore is a large tree with light green leaves and ornamental bark. It is a wide-canopied, deciduous tree, 75-100 ft. tall, with a massive trunk and open crown of huge, crooked branches. The bark of large, old trunks sloughs off in scales or plates leaving a smooth, whitish inner bark. Leaves broadly ovate or broader, blade often wider than long, long pointed. Globular fruits often persist through December. Large, medium- to dark-green, maple-shaped leaves turn brown in fall. A shade tree, Sycamore grows to a larger trunk diameter than any other native hardwood. The present champions trunk is about 11 feet (3.4 m) in diameter; an earlier giant was nearly 15 feet (4.6 m). The hollow trunks of old, giant trees were homes for chimney swifts in earlier times.