Christina Terpstra, age 10, of Utica, N.Y., for her question:

DO CATTAILS HAVE FLOWERS?

Everybody admires the cattail's velvety brown pokers. Actually they are bunches of tiny flowers attached to tiny seeds. When the seeds are ready, the neat pokers break apart into shaggy tufts of feathery fluff. When the wind blows the fluff away, it carries the seeds to new homes. Some folks tell us that parts of the cattail are good to eat. But naturally Andy's faithful friends leave them there for the water birds, as Mother Nature intended. As we know, people are supposed to produce their own foods