SOUTH FAIRMOUNT, Ohio — For the sake of clean water, a Moon Tree will bite the dust. But perhaps not completely; Bill Lagergren, a nurseryman, hopes to clone the tree.

When the Apollo 14 mission launched in 1971, astronaut Stuart Roosa, a former U.S. Forest Service smoke jumper, took hundreds of tree seeds along in his personal kit. Five days after takeoff, Alan Shepherd and Edgar Mitchell walked on the moon while Roosa and the seeds orbited above in the Kitty Hawk command module.

The U.S. Forestry Service germinated the seeds. Known as Moon Trees, they were planted throughout the country. In 1992, Dennis Smith, president of Paper Products Co. and an amateur astronomer with a keen interest in space, had the opportunity to buy a second generation Moon Tree, identified as a sycamore.

“When I opened it up it was not very attractive at all, it was just a stick,” Smith said. “I planted it behind our building here and watched it very carefully.”

A few years ago the Cincinnati Metropolitan Sewer District announced a plan for an urban waterway in South Fairmount, the Lick Run Valley Conveyance System Project. “There is a combination storm and sanitary sewer right behind our building,” Smith explained. “It goes up and down this whole valley, and during severe rainstorms untreated water goes into the Mill Creek and the Ohio River. This is a violation of the Clean Water Act.”

The Moon Tree, now a beautiful tree about 60 feet tall, was threatened; Smith sent out a flurry of emails. Nobody paid attention. His tree ended up right in the middle of the planned waterway and must be removed. Moving the tree would cost close to $100,000, and the roots need to be severed a year in advance.

Someone recommended he call Lagergren Nursery in Hamilton, Ohio. In January, nurseryman Lagergren and his assistant, Anne Wanamaker, took cuttings, branches and seeds, which the tree produces in the fall. Lagergren thinks it is a London plane tree, similar to a sycamore, because of the seeds.

“We’ll sow the seeds, we’ll stick the cuttings and we’ll do some grafts,” he said. “We’ll get something to take. It is a London plane tree, and they are a vigorous plant; they propagate easily.”

Wanamaker applied a rooting hormone before sticking the cuttings in a medium. The nursery provides bottom heat to keep the cuttings at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. “By about April or so they’ll start to put some top growth on,” Lagergren said. “Then we’ll know that we did well.”

The seeds should sprout around May, but since those seeds were open-pollinated they won’t be pure Moon Tree. Lagergren has also grafted branches of the Moon Tree onto a sycamore scion, basically cloning it.

“If the cuttings grow, the planners said they would like to propagate them up and down this urban waterway,” Smith said. “Everybody agrees that the sycamore tree is an ideal tree to plant in this environment.”

Since the project began, people started paying attention to the tree – but it was too late. Smith has letters of endorsement for saving it from NASA, the Cincinnati Observatory Center and the Cincinnati Astronomical Society. Roosa has died, but his son endorsed the project, as did the South Fairmount Community Council.

“It’s an historical tree and Smith wants to preserve it, which I think is a neat thing,” Lagergren said. “We’ve had great success in the past with this kind of thing.”