Photo: Carmen Weld

It seems the roundabout pot prank has moved from Vancouver to the Okanagan.

Castanet was tipped off Thursday to a suspicious green plant among the shrubs in the centre of the new roundabout outside Kelowna City Hall.

The approximately four-foot-tall marijuana plant was planted in the centre of the traffic circle, in plain view of passing motorists and, presumably, municipal workers at City Hall. It was supported by a tomato cage and, upon closer inspection, gave off a faint skunk smell.

City parks manager Ian Wilson headed directly to the roundabout shortly after he was questioned by Castanet about the contents of the roundabout garden.

“We dropped by the site and had a look, and it was definitely not planted by us. And it does look suspiciously like marijuana,” said Wilson.

“Somebody even put a little cage around it. It was definitely not in our planting plan. We don't know how it got there.”

Wilson said parks staff have no idea how long the plant may have been there, but police believe it wasn't very long.

Kelowna RCMP attended the scene shortly after the city arrived and confirmed the plant was indeed marijuana. They dug it up, and Cpl. Joe Duncan says it's currently sitting in the basement of the detachment, just a block away.

“The guys said it looked like it was freshly planted there, like last night,” said Duncan.

He couldn't speculate on whether the plant was placed to mimic a similar prank last week in Vancouver.

On July 21, residents of Vancouver's Mount Pleasant neighbourhood were surprised to discover a marijuana plant growing in a traffic circle there.