This is a typical deposit of ascospores from a standing-decaying leaf blade of smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora). A wetted decaying blade was placed a few millimeters over a coverslip and the ascomycetes within the blade expelled ascospores onto the coverslip at a rate of hundreds per square centimeter per hour. This view is of the coverslip at the microscope (for scale, the dark, 4-celled spores [P. spartinicola] are about 35 microns long). The smaller, colorless spores are of Mycosphaerella sp.2. These two species are nearly always found thoroughly mixed in the leaf-decay community -- they may be mutualists, perhaps digesting different portions of the cordgrass. See Newell, SY, 2001, Limnol. Oceanogr. 46:573-583 -- Web: http://www.aslo.org/lo/toc/vol_46/issue_3/0573.pdf