Mary Lynn Sheldon, age 12, of Utica, NewYork, for her question:

What grows from sesame seeds?

Sesame is the word that Ali Baba's wife had to remember to open the magic cave door. This exciting old story, as you know, came to us from the warm sunny lands of the Middle East. In just such a place, sesame seeds produce crops of green growing herbs, two or three feet tall. At harvest time, the plants are crowded with spiky pods all crammed with slippery little sesame seeds.

If you enjoy growing plants, you can coax a little sesame seed to show you just what it can do. The seeds you buy to sprinkle on buns will do, so long as you buy the untoasted, unroasted kind. Fill a flower pot with a mixture of sand and soil, plus a cupful of rich compost. Place half a dozen or so of your selected seeds on top and cover them with about a quarter inch of soil.

In Utica, New York, you will have to start this project either indoors on a sunny window sill or in some sort of greenhouse. In a few days, at least one and probably more of your sesame seeds will germinate. They put down roots and sprout little green shoots above the soil. Continue to provide sunshine and enough water to keep the soil moist but not soggy.

Growth is rather slow, but by the time spring comes to your neighborhood you should have a pot of handsome house plants. Each sesame plant has a tallish straight stem with large graceful green leaves. When the long hot days of summer arrive in northern New York, it is time to set your potted sesame outdoors. There it can get the direct sunlight it needs to produce its next year's crop of sesame seeds.

Keep the pot moist and sunny and chances are the plants will surprise you with a burst of blossoms. The pink or yellow flowers are an inch long and remind you of foxgloves, tucked close to the square stems. If all goes well, the flowers will be replaced by spiky little pods. Inside each pod there are four tight, neat rows of ripening sesame seeds.

Cultivated crops of sesame need fields of fairly rich soil and a long growing season with from 90 to 120 days of hot sunny summer weather. They are grown outdoors in Hawaii and in southern farm areas of North America. The handsome plants are thinned to grow six inches apart. Some grow 18 inches tall, other strains are two or three feet tall.

The slender seed pods are gathered in late fall and spread out in trays to finish drying. When the crisp pods are shaken, the slippery little sesame seeds fall out. Some are packaged to be sprinkled on cakes and buns. Cook books say that their delicate nutty flavor is improved when the seeds are toasted for a few minutes in a gently warm oven. Some sesame seeds are crushed to yield pale golden cooking oil. Some are mashed to make sesame butter    a wonderful spread, especially when mixed with a drop or two of honey.