The teasel of our local thistle is vicious. When I find one, I dig it up and dispose of it, so I've about gotten rid of most of them. Occasionally, one of the little monsters shows up in the spring, but I zap it before it can spread seeds.

When I for saw this in the upper right hand corner of the forums page, and since this is graduation season, I was thinking maybe this was some sort of graduation tassel, but the spelling was too far off.  Then I thought possibly it was some sort of fancy artist's easel, but that wasn't it either.  

It sort of looks like a cat tail plant with spines, like the porcupine version of a cat tail plant.  

I've seen them before, I just didn't know what they were called.  When I was a kid, we just called them prickly plants.