Did you settle on what that is?
I have a few different types of plants I've seen that look like that around here.
Never sure what's what.
I hate finding the canadian thistle in the lawn... because I like wearing flimsy sandals.
I got so mad at the stuff I took the spade and made holes in the lawn to get rid of it the year before last.
However, my husband convinced me not to chop down the plants that were tall at the border of the yard, and looked like the nasty things in the lawn... even though I was worried about it spreading back into where I'd step on it.
And I wasn't disappointed because as it turned out, goldfinches showed up in droves when those purple flowers bloomed.
However, there are 3 different types of purple flowers I've seen in the area, and each one has a different level of prickly bits.. the range. The worst you would NOT want to touch at all without very heavy gloves on. That's the stuff I believe is canadian thistle that turns up in the lawn. And the other end is the one that merely looks a little bit prickly but is very soft if you actually touch what you could see of prickliness. And then one in between... in that you don't want to grab it, but you won't need immediate first aid if you do either.