MikeLigalig.com

13 hours ago April 12, 2014 12:13PM



The cherry tree in bloom, grown from a cherry pit that spent time on-board the International Space Station (ISS), at the Ganjoji temple in Gifu city, central Japan. Picture: Chujo-Hime-Seigan-Zakura Preservation Society Source: AFP


A COSMIC mystery is uniting monks and scientists in Japan after a tree grown from a cherry stone that orbited the Earth for eight months bloomed years earlier than expected — and with very surprising flowers.

The four-year-old sapling — grown from a cherry pit that spent time on-board the International Space Station (ISS) -- burst into blossom on April 1, possibly a full six years ahead of Mother Nature's normal schedule.

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The stones were sent to the ISS in November 2008 and came back to Earth in July the following year with Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata after circling the globe 4100 times.

Some were sent for laboratory tests, but most were ferried back to their places of origin, and a selection were planted at nurseries near the Ganjoji temple.

By April this year, the “space cherry tree” had grown to around four metres (13 feet) tall, and suddenly produced nine flowers — each with just five petals, compared with about 30 on flowers of the parent tree.

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It normally takes about 10 years for a cherry tree of the similar variety to bear its first buds.

Exposure to cosmic rays?

“It was an educational and cultural project to let children gather the stones and learn how they grow into trees and live on after returning from space,” said Miho Tomioka, a spokeswoman for the project's organiser, Japan Manned Space Systems (JAMSS).

“We had expected the tree to blossom about 10 years after planting when the children come of age,” she said.

Kaori Tomita-Yokotani, a researcher at the University of Tsukuba, who took part in the project, told AFP she was stumped by the extraterrestrial mystery.

“We still cannot rule out the possibility that it has been somewhat influenced by its exposure to the space environment,” she said.

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