PERU — The Maine Warden Service was credited with helping state drug enforcement agents find an estimated $28,500 worth of marijuana plants growing in three separate plots on Tuesday afternoon.

Maine Drug Enforcement Agency agents' supervisor Gerry Baril said a warden service pilot who happened to be looking for something else in a fixed-wing plane, spotted what to him looked like pot and alerted them.

“When we went in on the ground today, it was pot,” Baril said of the sites. “He was right. One or two of the plots was spotted by a warden service plane flyover. He was not looking for pot.”

Sixteen plants were yanked at one spot and eight at a second, both of which were off Dickvale Road. Another 14 plants were found in a swampy area off Lacroix Road, which is off Dickvale Road.

“They were in the woods a good distance,” Baril said. “They were small grows that were scattered about.”

Baril said the plants were 6 or 7 feet tall with buds present. That height makes them “easy to spot from the air,” he added.

“These plants were in either a remote wooded area or a bog and not on anyone's property, so there's no way to tell who put them there,” Baril said. “Where they were budding, they probably had another three to four weeks to go to reach full maturity.”

With marijuana currently selling for $3,000 a pound and each plant estimated to yield a quarter pound of pot, he estimated the street value at $28,500.

“The next six weeks are crucial for pot harvesters, because they have three months worth of labor that could disappear if we find the plants first,” Baril said.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com