HILO, Hawai'i — A recent Big Island police raid on a marijuana-growing operation in Ka'u turned up a patch of 226 opium poppy plants, a crop so rare in Hawai'i that police initially weren't certain what they had found.

Lt. Mitchell Kanehailua of the Hawai'i County Police Department's Kona vice unit said the pods on the plants had been scored to drain out a resin or paste that can be dried and then smoked or refined into heroin. Police recovered a small container that held some of the tar-like paste, he said.

However, Kanehailua said there was no sign the growers were smoking or processing the material, so it is unclear what they planned to do with the crop, which was growing along with 670 marijuana plants on a one- to two-acre property on Kona Drive in Hawaiian Ocean View Estates.

Kanehailua said he is aware of only one other Big Island case in which opium poppy plants were seized, and that was in the 1980s.

Keith Kamita, administrator of the Narcotics Enforcement Division of the state Department of Public Safety, said the case is the first he has heard of in Hawai'i in which someone was growing opium poppies.

The plants were seized as police conducted a series of marijuana eradication missions in July that netted about 7,000 plants in Puna, Ka'u and Hilo. Police reported the results of the eradication effort to the Hawai'i County Council yesterday.

Kanehailua said police officers in a helicopter spotted the marijuana plants and a network of trails linking tents and other structures on the Hawaiian Ocean View Estates property. A search warrant was obtained, and during a July 15 raid, police seized the poppy plants, two firearms, some LSD, about 10 pounds of dried marijuana and plants that were growing under tents and in open areas.

Officers found items identifying two people but the suspected growers reportedly had fled and abandoned the property, Kanehailua said.

Police are seeking a man and a woman in connection with the case.

Anyone with information may contact Kanehailua at (808) 326-4646, ext. 226.

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.