Like dreams, trees take root and reach for the skies.

They start small, grow with experience, sway in the blowing wind and tell a unique story with every ring of their inner soul.

NC State’s newest tree was planted this spring in honor of one of the school’s biggest dreamers, NASA astronaut Christina Hammock Koch, the three-time graduate of the university who fulfilled her lifelong dream of flying to the moon in April as one of four crewmembers on NASA’s Artemis II.

The tree, a 6-foot-tall loblolly pine, is special: It’s a second-generation Moon Tree, the descendant of about 2,000 sycamore, loblolly pine, sweetgum, redwood and Douglas fir seeds that NASA command module pilot Stuart Roosa, a former employee of the U.S. Forest Service, took with him on the Apollo 14 moon mission in 1971.

“It only seemed right to me that NC State should have a Moon Tree and that we also use it to honor one of the Wolfpack’s very own for her historic contribution to space exploration.”

After taking their trip with Roosa aboard command module Kitty Hawk, those seeds were planted in Alabama and California. Saplings were distributed to national parks, academic landscapes, botanical gardens, arboretums and government grounds around the country, usually as part of the US 1976 bicentennial celebration. About 170 of those original Moon Trees are still thriving, having made it to this year’s semiquincentennial.

In North Carolina, there are original Moon Trees located at the University Botanical Gardens adjacent to UNC Asheville, at Western Carolina in Cullowhee, at Haywood Community College, and at the Cradle of Forestry started by NC State benefactor Carl Schenk in the Pisgah National Forest near Brevard.

Another batch of experimental seeds traveled on the uncrewed Artemis I mission in 2022, with saplings from those seeds planted at Haywood Community College, the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham and Mars Hill University. Two years ago, Koch was on hand at the North Carolina Executive Mansion on Blount Street in downtown Raleigh to dedicate an Artemis I Moon Tree planted on the grounds.

NC State’s Moon Tree, which came from the seeds of a mature 1971 tree at Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, Alabama, was the idea of Plant Sciences Building operations manager Geoff Bock. It was planted by the university’s campus planning and grounds crew, under the supervision of urban forester Brooke Costanza. They planted it in the center of a crescent moon-shaped bed of mulch, in a green space adjacent to Partners III that is within sight of the Plant Sciences Building and just a block away from the newly renamed Koch Hall (formerly Engineering Building II).

“It only seemed right to me that NC State should have a Moon Tree and that we also use it to honor one of the Wolfpack’s very own for her historic contribution to space exploration,” Bock says.

The tree, a budding pine, survived the summer’s difficult drought conditions and now stands planted in one moon while reaching toward the other, much like the alumna in whose honor it was planted.