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Unusual botany has been cropping up alongside London’s landmarks in the form of cannabis plants.

Cannabis activists have been scattering cannabis seeds across the capital to criticise drug laws and claim it is completely legal because they are “feeding the birds.”

The #Feed420 campaign invites participants to plants the seeds to provoke the government into changing cannabis laws for people using it for medicinal purposes.

Campaigners claim three foot high cannabis plants have been growing along the South Bank and by the Tower of London for months, with some still going unnoticed.

Finn Hemmingway, spokesman for Feed The Birds, said he believes there are as many as 2,000 people scattering seeds across the UK in support of the campaign.

He said: “Some of them are still there. The oldest are three months old and were planted eight to 10 weeks ago.

“I think a fair amount of them have gone unnoticed, in the coming months they will become more obvious.”

He added: “The war on drugs is a catastrophic failure, and I think that cannabis growing openly on the streets of London emphasises how ludicrous our drug laws are. Putting a human in a prison cell for using a plant is the crime."

"In an ideal world I would like to see medicinal users not being sent to prison for everyday use."

A spokeswoman for the Home Office confirmed the campaigners were not breaking the law, if they were not cultivating the plants.