NEW YORK (AP) Eighteen marijuana plants, some of them 5 feet tall, have
been growing alongside a Parks Department building in Tompkins Square Park on
Manhattan's Lower East Side.

The illegal crop was torn out Monday night by department workers who had been
told of its presence by the Daily News.

Two small plants also were growing at the park entrance on Avenue A near St.
Marks Place, and another near a playground. They were ripped up as well.

Parks Commissioner Henry Stern said he would investigate how the plants grew
unnoticed outside a building where park workers store equipment and change
clothes.

The 163yearold park, on a site once owned by James Monroe's vice president,
Daniel D. Tompkins, was a magnet for counterculture youths and rock concerts
in the 1960s. Later it was taken over by squatters, who had several
confrontations with police, the most violent of which occurred in the summer
of 1988.

After the homeless were again driven from the park in the summer of 1991, it
was closed for a $2 million renovation and reopened a year later with a night
curfew.

Botanist Scott Appell of the Horticultural Society of New York, who was
called to the scene by the News, said the marijuana plants appeared to be
several months old.

Marijuana plants, he said, ``have to be planted. Somebody deliberately
pitches these seeds.''

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