VIENNA » Vienna police have shut down an unusual cannabis "ring" — hemp growing along the Austrian capital’s busy Ring Street encircling the city’s center.

Alerted by a news article about the illegal crop, police officers on Friday plucked a 200-meter (yard) stretch of green space along the three-lane street clean of the offending plants.

They acted after a Viennese biology student walking along the Ringstrasse identified the green sprouts poking through bark mulch beneath the stately trees seaming the street and told the Heute about his discovery.

Police are investigating.