For Sure, This Was No Ordinary Weed

A Whitman County employee found new meaning in the term “weed control” this week when he unearthed a 2-foot-tall marijuana plant growing a few blocks from downtown.

“It did kind of add an interesting dimension to the job to find, quote-unquote, ‘weed’ rather than noxious weed,” said John Lamb, who found the plant just five days after taking a job as a county noxious weed inspector.

Police were not that impressed, because they field about a dozen reports of Palouse pot each year.

“This is not unusual,” said Sgt. Chris Tennant. “Marijuana grows just fine in this climate.”

Because the plant’s seeds contain no THC, marijuana’s active ingredient, pot smokers generally discard them. Those seeds that find their way to soil tend to germinate in spring and pop up in local fields and flower beds, even a planter outside the police station, Tennant said.

Lamb and a fellow inspector made their discovery Tuesday while looking for more common weeds like cinquefoil, whitetop and common tansy near McKenzie and Dilke streets, a few blocks south of Main Street.

After a field guide and a local plant expert confirmed Lamb’s suspicion that it was marijuana, Lamb turned the plant over to police on Wednesday.

When city workers find pot plants, they usually destroy them before they reach a significant height, said Tennant. But because this plant was formally presented to police and placed in the property room, police will need to get a court order to destroy it “so people don’t think we take it home and smoke it,” he said.