Don Eriekson, age 11, of Sunnymead, Calif., for his question:

Is there really a chewing gum tree?

There is a chocolate tree and a caramel tree and, of course, there is a chewing gum tree. However old Mother Nature, who provides these goodies, expects us to do a bit of work for them. How else would we appreciate, and therefore enjoy them? Chocolate must be taken from the chocolate tree bean, sweetened and flavored with vanilla. Caramel is taken from the sugar cane, the sweetheart which also yields lollipops and all day suckers.

The plant which yields chewing gum is called the sapodilla. It is an evergreen tree of the warm, wet tropics. And the splendid tree yields more than chewing gum. It has reddish brown hard wood and a rich fruit. The fruit is brown and fuzzy, nestled in the glossy foliage. The pulp of the sapodilla fruit is brownish pink, juicy and very sweet.

The chewing gum flows in the veins of the tree. Naturally we did not expect it to grow in neat packages. Remember, we have; to work for such goodies. The raw gum is a kind of latex, much too watery to chew. The bark of the tree is slashed in gashes and the latex oozes from the wounds. It is drained and caught in canvas bags.

The latex fluid of the sapodilla is called chicle ‑ which rhymes with tickle. The first Job is to get rid of its extra water. The chicle is boiled and boiled until some 35% of its water has evaporated. Then it is kneaded into a solid mass of dough. It is packaged in 25 pound lumps and sent on its way to the chewing gum factory.

Here it becomes one ingredient in the chewing gum recipe. About 70% of the recipe is sugar from our wonderful lollipop tree. There is caramel paste and flavoring to taste. Only some 20% of most chewing gum is the chicle gum ingredient.

The ingredients are cooked in a revolving oven at a temperature of about 250 degrees Fahrenheit. 1Alhen properly cooked and blended, the dough is removed and sent to the rollers. Hands do not touch it. Machines press it into layers of the proper thickness and slice it into strips of the proper size. The slabs are coated with a substance to seal in the flavor.

Now the dainty, delicious sticks of chewing gum are ready for wrapping. More machines fold each one in the right paper with the proper name and flavor printed clearly for everyone to read. Then these neatly wrapped sticks are trimly bound in bundles of five.

Most of our chicle gum comes from the sapodilla trees that grow in the warm, wet forests of Yucatan, Guatemala and British Hondoras. Other sapodilla trees grow in the Philippines and the Malay Peninsula. This gum is called jelutong or pontianak. It is sometimes used along with chicle gum or to replace it. Bubble gum is a chicle gum with the addition of a little latex from a rubber tree.