Garden Pests and Diseases: Looks like a growth on blackberry vine, 2 by SummerStorm93

SummerStorm93 wrote:
I took these pictures at a client\'s house. Frankly, I\'m going to pull out these plants no matter what, because they\'re in a flower bed and working around them is painful (scratches, they have killer thorns.) However, I\'d like to know if I need to treat the area for anything, since I\'ve never seen growths like these on blackberry before. These pics are of one of about ten that I ran across, all roughly the same size. My hand is in the first pic for size perspective. Is this caused by insects, fungus...? Something in the soil, maybe?