Thorns in my grass

[jjharvey]

I live in North Carolina. Recently, my yard has aquired small green balls with purple thorns. I have never seen this before and wonder if anyone knows what they are and how to get rid of them. Like i said, they are green, very small, and most have purple thorns comming out of them.

[dvmcmrhp52]

Do you happen to have any immature sweetgum trees in the area?

[jjharvey]

no sweetgum trees in the area...after i researched it i saw pictures of the sweetgum seeds. They were much bigger than the green seeds i am talking about

[dvmcmrhp52]

Yup,
Mature sweetgum seeds will be much larger,that's why I asked about immature trees.
That was my quick thought on it, nothing else comes to mind at the moment.................

[Critical Care]

Can you take a picture of these? Also, what's around your yard, or growing up above it? If your lawn is full of these things then I'd surely suspect a source nearby. Since these are in your lawn, I wouldn't suspect that they're coming from weeds unless if your yard is in rather sad shape. If that were the case, there are a number of weeds that produce "thorny" fruit, such as puncture vine, cockleburs, and a host of others.

As a wild wild guess, the small green ball type of fruit makes me think of certain types of arborvitae where some of the small green imature fruit will appear to have horns (thorns?) on them. Do they look anything like what you see in this link below?

http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ldplants/thor4.htm

[longslawn]

Sounds like sandspurs. Are the growing on grass like weeds? Sandspurs are about the size of a push pin head with purple and sometimes green spikes.

[Critical Care]

Here's some good pics of cenchrus tribuloides, aka sandbur, sandspur, or field sandbur that Longslawn mentioned.

http://www.hawriverprogram.org/NCPlants/Cenchrus_tribuloides_page.html

I'm glad that this stuff doesn't grow out here. You lucky devils! Kinda sounds like Longslawn may of hit the nail on the head with this one.