In the wake of the disastrous Apollo 13 mission, the revolutionary space program that had landed humans on the Moon was under threat of cancellation. To the politicians, the program’s high costs outweighed the potential for further scientific study. To the public, the Space Race had been won, and any further trips to the Moon seemed a mere postscript to Apollo 11’s triumph. To guarantee the program’s survival, Apollo 14 would not only have to be an unambiguous success, its scientific discoveries would have to justify the costs of bringing humans to the Moon.

To command Apollo 14, Alan Shepard was selected, a veteran of the Mercury Program and the second human in space on May 5, 1961, following close on cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s flight a month before. Shepard was poised for further missions, but in 1963 he was diagnosed with Ménière's syndrome, a buildup of fluid in the inner ear that causes severe vertigo. Shepard was grounded from all flights, taking on an administrative role at NASA and investing in Houston real estate. Only in 1968 did an experimental procedure relieve Shepard of his vertigo and return him to flight status.

Ever self-confident, Shepard suggested himself to command Apollo 13 and was approved by Deke Slayton, Director of Flight Crew Operations. Ultimately, Shepard was bumped to Apollo 14 to allow for more training for the veteran astronaut. Joining him on the Lunar surface would be Edgar Mitchell, a naval pilot, and in the command module Stuart Roosa, a pilot and former smokejumper for the U.S. Forest Service. The three trained for 19 months in preparation for their journey.

All three men had worked in mission control on previous Apollo missions and were eager to make it to the Moon themselves, though they were surely thankful to have been spared flying on Apollo 13. By that point, missions Apollo 18, 19, and 20 had all been scrapped, and time was running out to make it to the Moon. Shepard in particular was dead set in achieving a full-up mission, accomplishing all of their assigned tasks during their brief stay. Apollo 14 would be the first mission to the Lunar Highlands and could potentially reveal much about the geological makeup of the Moon.

On January 31, 1971, Apollo 14 blasted off from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39-A, beginning what promised to be a triumphant return to the Moon. This optimism was cut short quickly. First, Roosa was unable to connect the command module Kitty Hawk to the lunar lander Antares, potentially aborting the mission before it could even begin. Eventually, a plan was devised to fire the command module’s thrusters to hold it against the lander while the docking probe was retracted. Only then did the two machines properly dock and the mission could continue.

Unfortunately, after separating from the command module, the problems only continued from there. A faulty abort signal almost prevented the Antares from landing until a revised program was written at MIT, which Shepard keyed in with just minutes to spare. Next, the radar system went offline, only returning once the crew manually recycled the circuit breaker. By the time the lunar module landed on the Moon and Shepard and Mitchell were on the surface, the mission’s commander’s first words were ones of relief: “It’s been a long way, but we’re here.”

Now that Shepard and Mitchell had reached the Moon, their main task lay ahead of them: reaching Cone crater, where they hoped to find ejected pieces of deeper Moon rocks. Shepard and Mitchell set off with a MET (modular equipment transporter) cart. The two were determined to reach the rim of Cone crater, not just for the scientific glory, but because of a personal bet. Gene Cernan and Joe Engle of the backup team bet a case of whisky they would not be able to reach the top of Cone carrying the MET in tow.

While Shepard and Mitchell explored the surface, Roosa was busy as well. He had brought along a packet of 500 seeds from pine, sycamore, sweetgum, redwood, and fir trees. An idea inspired by his days working for the U.S. Forest Service, Roosa sought to see the effects of lunar gravity on the development of seedlings.

In the end, Shepard and Mitchell ended up losing their bet, unable to locate the rim of Cone in the sprawling Lunar landscape. They were however able to retrieve many Lunar rocks that shed much light on the makeup of the Moon’s surface. To cap the mission off Shepard, an avid linksman, fired off two golf balls across the Lunar surface. From there, the lander linked with the command module and returned to Earth, mercifully free of any further technical issues.

In quarantine back on Earth, Shepard and Mitchell cursed themselves to learn that it turned out they had only been 65 feet from the rim of Cone crater. Cernan sent over the case of whiskey, considering that close enough. During their time in quarantine, Shepard was also surprised to read in a newspaper that Mitchell had conducted an ESP experiment while en route to the Moon, attempting to send telepathic signals to a group of fellow believers back on Earth. Shepard was angered to hear about the attempt, but with a successful mission behind him and a case of whiskey ahead of him, he could hardly find the will to be angry. Apollo 14 had been a success, guaranteeing the future of the program.

Both the surface and orbit missions brought back interesting results. 94 pounds (43 kg) of moon rocks were hauled back to Earth, including a massive 19 pound stone nicknamed “Big Bertha.” As for Roosa’s seeds, almost all were germinated and sprouted upon return to the planet. The successful saplings were donated to state forestry programs a few years later as a part of the bicentennial celebrations.

What makes these trees so scientifically interesting is that they developed without issue and were indistinguishable from their planet-side counterparts. As an important early step in the field of astrobotany, this experiment showed that extended movements through low and zero-gravity spaces did not stunt the growth of these plants.

On January 31, 1971, Apollo 14 carried three astronauts to the moon along with hundreds of tree seeds. Upon return, the U.S. Forest Service successfully germinated a small number of seeds and dispersed the saplings during the bicentennial celebrations of 1975 and 1976.

This specimen comes from a surviving moon tree: a Sycamore living on the campus of the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. In 2014, the tree was damaged in a storm and a fallen limb was preserved by Senior Research Specialist and White House Champion for Change, Dolores Hill.