Jean Reider, age 13, of St. Paul, Minnesota, for her question:

Does coffee grow on a bush or a tree?

A tree is a tall, woody plant with branches hoisted aloft on a sturdy trunk. The type of bush known as a shrub is a short, woody plant with branches that often sprout close to the ground. Both trees and shrubs are: perennial plants that go on growing through many seasons.

It is not always possible to say for certain whether a plant is a tree or a bushy shrub. Many trees can be dwarfed and trained down to shrub size. In favored conditions, many shrubs grow large enough to be called small trees. Our coffee beans grow on one of these plants which is surely tall enough to be called tree size. But toffee plants grown in plantations are pruned down low so that at harvest time the ripe berries are within easy reaching distance. Some plantation plants are cut down to 12 feet, some to 10 feet and some are allowed to grow no higher than six feet tall. These sawed off coffee plants can safely be called bushes or shrubs.

We Americans drink almost 500 million cups of coffee every day, and most of the beans are grown on moist, warm, hilly slopes way down in Brazil. We would expect the fragrant beverage to be donated to us by a glamorous plant. And so it is. But few of us get a chance to enjoy the year round wonders of a coffee plantation. The large, long evergreen leaves are dark and glossy. In springtime a fragrance sweeter than honeysuckle reaches out to greet us from afar.

When we reach the plants, the lush leaves seem to be blanketed with softly fallen snow. This seems odd because the climate is tropical and the temperature never falls below 60 degrees. The snow turns out to be a zillion little white trumpet shaped blossoms, crowded cheek to cheek. As the blossoms wither, they are replaced by small, green berries. Through the summer, the swelling berries turn yellow and ripen to bright, cherry red.

Harvest arrives in the fall and usually the berries are picked by hand. The beans destined to produce drinking coffee are inside the pulpy fruit. Usually there are two bean seeds inside each berry. The plants begin bearing worthwhile crops at the age of five and each plant can be expected to yield one pound of roasted beans for many years.

Various machines strip the pulp from the ripe berries and peel two layers of papery skin from the soft, blue green beans. Sun drying hardens the beans and turns them yellow. Between these processes, there are finicky washings and rinsings. Finally the dried beans are weighed in 132 pound lots, stuffed into burlap bags and shipped to processing plants to be roasted and ground for the world's coffee drinking population.

There are perhaps 100 kinds of coffee plant, each with its own type of fragrant, flavorsome bean. Coffee manufacturers select blends of beans from different countries and grind their special recipes of roasted beans to gritty grains. Most brands are ground in different sizes to be used in percolators or drip type coffee pots. The brown granules are packed in cans or vacuum containers and at long last the bean seeds of the coffee plant are ready for breakfast.