Harvey Sayles, age 11, of Calgary, Alb., Canada, For his question:
What is copra?
Copra is one of those invisible workers in our everyday lives. It is present in soaps and foamy shampoos. It may be used to feed cattle or enrich soil. Copra works for us, but we seldom see it. It is a gift from the cocoanut palms that grow on the balmy islands of the Pacific. It is the crunchy, white meat of the cocoanut, dried to remove its milky moisture.
Flakes of cocoanut meat are dried in the sun, fanned with streams of hot air or roasted in hot ovens. The dried flakes are copra, and the nut meat is still rich in oil. The golden cocoanut oil is squeezed from the copra to make soaps and other items. The squeezed flakes of copra are used as cattle fodder and fertilizers.
Judy Skakun, Age 10, of Ottawa, Ont., Canada, for her question:
What is a composite flower?
In mid winter We must find our composite flowers in warm homes and glassy greenhouses. A pampered pot of chrysanthemums is crowned with a tousled top of composite flowers. The delicate cineraria house plant puts forth a cloud of pink or blue eyed blossoms that are composite flowers.
Through spring, summer and fall, the composite flowers show their smiling faces in our gardens. Wild composites crowd the waysides and nod their bright heads among the meadow grasses. One tenth of all the flowers in the world are composites, and all together there are 12,000 of them. They are classified in the flower family Compositae.
Every sunny faced daisy is a composite flower. The word composite means composed or made up of many parts. The eye daisy has a round golden eye in the middle of a fringe of paper white petals. It looks for all the world. Like a single flower. Actually it is composed of dozens of small flowers arranged in one graceful design.
Each of the paper white petals is a complete flower in its own right. All the velvety buttons that cover the golden eye also are true flowers. The ribbony border flowers are caed the ray flowers, perhaps because they fan out like the rays of the sun. The yellow flowers in the center are like little tubes. They are ca11ed tube flowers or disk flawers. Most composites have both disk and ray flowers. A few, such as the spiky thistle, have disk flowers, but no ray flowers.
A composite, made from a crowd of small flowers, can make a brighter showing than a single flower. It is noticed by the bees and other insects. One visiting bee may leave enough grains of pollen for a sunflower to create dozens of its meaty little nuts. Thistles and dandelions launch their seeds on fluffy parachutes. Marigolds and sticktight weeds produce seeds with tiny hooks. They cling like toothy bugs to the coats of passing animals.
In summer, the Compositae family adorns the world with ve1vety black eyed Susans and 60 different sunflowers, with smiling daisies and blue eyed chicory, with coneflowers of pink and blue and with tall yarrow, like frothy white lace. In fall, there are starry eyed asters of pink and blue, tufts of dusty ragweed and pom pons of goldenrod.
Once upon a time a magician coaxed a wild field daisy to turn into an elegant garden flower. His name was Luther Burbank, and the flower he gave us was the fluffy Shasta daisy. Other garden flowers developed from composites include dazzling dahlias and chrysanthmums, like bunches of bright ribbons, sunny marigolds and vivid zinnias that rival the rainbow.