They are a type of thistle. You can take a long knife from your local thrift store and insert a inch or so from root and twist around root to loosen. With practice you can get them to just pop up with a flick of the wrist. Or if you can get a herbicide and spray on the center. I used to use weed-be-gon. It may take several time to kill them completely.

I like to get some fairly thick gloves on and remove them. This looks to me like canada thistle- an, unfortunately, extremely common plant. ;)

I water mine real good before removing ,seems to come out easier that way!~Angie

Looks somewhat like Canada thistle, but not really. If it is Canada, it has an extensive root system and you will have to remove every plant you see, continously for a couple years, to starve out the roots. Otherwise, lawn herbicides for broadleaf weeds will keep in it check but not kill it. Products with Clopyrilid ?sp will do a better job, as will Round-up, particularly in the fall.

It looks to me a bit more like a different thistle, which is likely a biennial--it starts growing one year, sometimes in late summer or fall and forms a low growing rosette. Next year it will shoot up and go to seed. If it is this type of thistle, broadleaf herbicides will usually control it during the first year but control other than chopping it is difficult the second year when it is trying to go to seed--though if you keep it mowed off the second year, it won't be able to produce seed heads. It will die after the second year and new plants will come from seed only.

They have these tools in gardening sections that has a fork at the tip and a half-cylinder bump out right behind it. You stick the fork in the center so that the root would fall in between, with the bump out facing down. Then you push down and the bump out gives you leverage. The hole thing comes out.

We have a similar weed, but not the same. It has pretty long roots. When you pull it by hand, it always breaks and you can't get the roots out. Watering beforehand should help also.

Pinar