Dale Selberg, age 10, of Peoria, Ill., for his question:

Are May apples good to eat?

Summer is the time to wander through the woods and open country: The green ,leaves are crowding a lifetime of work into a few short months. Naked fledglings, furry cubs, pups and toddlers of all sorts are getting their schooling. Busy insects are making the best of warm days. The summery earth is full of wondrous things to see, to hear, to smell ‑ and maybe to touch and to taste.

But not all these fascinating things are friendly to human beings. Certain snakes bite with poisoned fangs. Be sure to memorize those that haunt your neighborhood. Bees stings and so do hornets. Mosquitoes stab with poisoned beaks. So learn all you can about how to avoid trouble and to handle what you cannot avoid. Watch out and enjoy the rest,

In the main, the plant kingdom is friendly. But there are exceptions. Mushrooms are good to eat. But some of their cousins are poisonous. It takes an expert to tell which fungus plan is safe for us to eat. We have other foes in the brambles that claw and the nettles that sting. And we all know what poison ivy, poison oak and poison sumac can do to us.

However, plants can't chase after us. True, certain pollens drift in the air and make some people sneeze. But most plants must wait until we touch them before they can harm us. You scrambled through the brambles,` settled in the nettles or stroked the poison oak before you felt them. With sharp eyes, proper information and good sense you can avoid such lurking foes. You may hear reports for and against the May apple. Both reports are true.

You may come upon May apple plants in the eastern part of North America. The plants tend to grow in colonies. Their huge green leaves cover marshy areas‑with deep carpets. The handsome leaves have deeply carved edges and may be a foot wide. Each plant has two of them, arranged like twin parasols. The twin leaf stalks join to form the single plant stem. In early summer, there is summery there is one waxy, white blossom on each plant. It is nestled at the top of the stem in the angle of the forking leaf stalks.

The flower fades and develops into an oval fruit of delicate yellow: This is why the plant is sometimes called the wild lemon, The fruit is better known as the May apple, It may be two inches long and it looks very tempting] You may have heard that it is delicious to eats

But here is some information for the sensible ones. The May apple plant is listed along with locoweed, belladonna, jimson weed and our poison auks and such as one of the poisonous plants of North America. Its leaves, its stems and its rootstocks are poisonous to human beings. Only the lemon colored fruit is not poisonous.

Will you take a chance on touching those dangerous leaves and stem just to get a taste of the fruit? Andy is sure you won't. So here is a report to satisfy your curiosity. It has a sweet‑sour taste rather like strawberries, So who cares, when you can eat real strawberries without taking a chance at all;