Rob Haynes, age 7, of Montgomery, Alabama, for his question:

Why do toadstools have so many colors?

Some toadstools look like pale stones strewn on the ground. Some are pasty colors, speckled and freckled with bright shades of orange red or yellow, light browns or dark browns or almost black. Naturally we know they are deadly dangerous little plants. Sometimes just a bite of a toadstool can kill a person. So why do they show off in such pretty colors? No, they are not trying to warn us away. And no, they are not trying to tempt us to taste them.

As a rule, Mother Nature colors her plants and animals to match the scenery. Toadstools grow in dewy grass and damp woods. But they cannot match the leaves because they have no green coloring material. So they are colored to match other things in the scenery. Pasty white toadstools look like stones and pebbles. Spotted toadstools match the pretty orange, brown and yellow splashes in fallen leaves. And some toadstools match the soft speckled browns in the rough bark of a tree trunk. When you see them growing where they belong, almost all of them match the natural scenery.