Do not walk on the grass: Moscow council discovers mysterious cannabis patch

Moscow authorities have been left red-faced after planting the wrong kind of "grass" outside a metro station – several hundred cannabis plants.

The mysterious greenery had shot up in a park next to a new metro station that had been spruced up and replanted by municipal workers

Officers from the FSKN, Russia’s drug control service, were called in after receiving a tip-off about “strange vegetation” growing in newly-laid soil in the Brateyevo neighbourhood.

The mysterious greenery had shot up in a park next to a new metro station that had been spruced up and replanted by municipal workers.

“Instead of lawn grass, we found ‘weed’,” an FSKN spokesman explained. “The officers were obliged to take on the work of professional gardeners. They dug up 230 of the drug-containing plants.”

An investigation was launched into how cannabis seeds got into the earth, which was provided by a firm contracted to local government.

Russian television showed a man pulling up plants about a foot high and said others were continuing to spring up in the soil.

Meanwhile, a federal MP has written to prosecutors demanding a probe into how budget money was spent on the horticultural bungle in southeast Moscow. The plot was reportedly not far from a school.

Some forms of cannabis grow wild in Russia and drug control agents occasionally mow and burn large tracts found in the countryside. In one case in 2007, tanks were drafted in to flatten a shoulder-high field of the plants in the far eastern Amur region.

Russian scientists are currently developing new forms of hemp, the low-narcotic form of cannabis used in making fibre and other products, with a view to cultivation on a mass scale.

Some forms of cannabis grow wild in Russia and drug control agents occasionally mow and burn large tracts found in the countryside. In one case in 2007, tanks were drafted in to flatten a shoulder-high field of the plants in the far eastern Amur region.

Russian scientists are currently developing new forms of hemp, the low-narcotic form of cannabis used in making fibre and other products, with a view to cultivation on a mass scale.