thorny weed in my lawn

hi there

i'm new to messaging and gardening. i bought my first place last summer and have a nice big garden. when i moved in i noticed that on the lawn there were long thick thorny weed/bramble/something running through the grass!

i cut all of the trailing stuff back, it had/has purpley leaves and the trailing stems are woody,barky.

i then started to dig the roots out, as it just kept growing back. the roots were really deeply embedded and really really tough to pull out, that was also woody/barky.

now this was last summer i used loads of different weedkiller that you can get from homebase, but none of its worked.

i've hacked half my lawn out digging out the roots!

so you can imagine how peeved i was when i saw those ghastly leaves poping out of the lawn!!!

can anyone tell me what this is and how i can get rid of it once and for all!! help!!!

 

Hey there Spat, any chance of a picture ?

Col

 

i'll take a pic tonight col, and put up tomorrow! thanks