Rosemont Middle School students plant a tree that has roots that extend to the stars.

By Mary O’KEEFE

Rosemont Middle School science students gathered around a small tree on Monday. School custodians had dug a hole where the tree was going to be planted. The students were all smiles and excited when two girls took the tree from science teacher Salome Abraham Chuang and placed it in the ground. 

The girls stepped away and several other students put a shovel of dirt around the tree, securing it in its new home.  

This tree is now only a couple of feet tall but it will soon tower over the Rosemont yard. It is a sequoia, which is a pretty big deal; however, this particular tree has an astronomical background. 

The students applied to NASA a year ago to be chosen as a school to plant a “Moon tree.”

It all started with Apollo 14. 

“NASA astronaut Stuart Roosa, the command module pilot for the Apollo 14 mission and a former U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Forest Service smoke jumper, carried tree seeds into lunar orbit,” according to NASA. 

Once back on Earth, the “Moon trees” were grown into seedlings by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Forest Services and then disseminated to national monuments and dignitaries around the world. 

“In a nod to the legacy of Apollo 14, and a celebration of the future of space exploration with NASA’s Artemis Program, a ‘new generation’ of Moon tree seeds traveled into lunar orbit aboard the Orion spacecraft. The seeds travelled  thousands of miles beyond the Moon spending about four weeks in space before returning to Earth,” according to NASA. 

NASA then reached out to local schools allowing them to compete with other schools to be awarded the trees. Krista Mcmillin, the head of the Rosemont Science Dept., received one of those email invitations and presented it to the science department.

“It was a long application,” Mcmillin said. “They wanted to make sure we had guaranteed space for the tree and a barricade around it.”

Chuang was tasked with filling out the application. Rosemont administrators were not sure what type of tree they were going to receive. 

“We sent [the application] out fall of last year,” she said. “We hadn’t heard so we thought we didn’t get [accepted] – and then we heard this fall that we got it.”

Sequoias can reach 30 feet tall within the first 10 years after planting. They can reach up to 300 feet in total and the trunk of a sequoia can be 40 feet in diameter – or larger. 

After planting the tree, teachers at Rosemont had about 20 students hold hands and encircle the planted Moon tree to show the size the trunk could reach. 

“This is a little piece of the moon space program,” Mcmillan said. 

Principal Suzanne Risse said it was a great opportunity for students to plant this tree as it will be at Rosemont long after they leave the middle school. 

Although the classes in attendance on Monday were from the Science Department, the tree was actually planted by students from the Gardening Club and its care will continue by the club.