After spending time in space, a cherry stone has grown into a tree that blossomed about six years before expected, puzzling scientists and monks in Japan.
Cherry trees normally produced flowers after a decade, but this sapling is four years old, the AFP reported. Standing about 13 feet tall, the wonder tree has nine flowers with five petals apiece, which is fewer than the parent cherry tree's 30 petals per flower.
One of 265 cherry pips harvested from the "Chujo-hime-seigan-zakura" tree in Japan, the seed traveled in space onboard the International Space Station from November 2008 to July of the following year. During its trip with Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, the intrepid cherry stone circled the Earth some 4,100 times, according to the AFP.
The pip was one of those selected to be planted at tree nurseries near the Ganjoji temple.
"We are amazed to see how fast it has grown," Masahiro Kajita, chief priest at the Ganjoji temple in Gifu, told the AFP by phone.
"A stone from the original tree had never sprouted before. We are very happy because it will succeed the old tree, which is said to be 1,250 years old."
The seeds took a trip on the ISS as part of "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," Miho Tomioka, a spokeswoman for the project's organizer, Japan Manned Space Systems, told the AFP.
Pits have been planted at 14 locations, and four of them have grown into trees that sprout blossoms. One cherry seed planted in Hokuto, a mountain region west of Tokyo, became a tree that sprouted 11 flowers at two years of age, some six years ahead of schedule for its variety.
Because the project was simply for educational purposes, scientists didn't create a control group for the cherry seeds and can't be sure whether or not their trip into space was a factor for early blooms.
"Of course, there is the possibility that exposure to stronger cosmic rays accelerated the process of sprouting and overall growth," plant physiologist Tomita-Yokotani told the AFP.
"From a scientific point of view, we can only say we don't know why."
See Now: OnePlus 6: How Different Will It Be From OnePlus 5?
