I was out in the woods today and sat down at the edge of a pond to observe that small area closely. I noticed something that really intrigued me: the leaf litter was mostly baldcypress and sycamore, and the hollow bases of the sycamore petioles were covered by a white fungal growth. This fungal growth was not seen anywhere else – not on other parts of the sycamore leaves, and when I had earlier sat down in another spot just a few minutes’ walk distant, not on any of the diverse other leaves there.
A regular internat search is no help – that just brings up information about powdery mildew disease of living sycamore leaves. Google Scholar was not help either, as it returned papers about fungal diseases, bark epiphytic fungi, and wood endophytic fungi of syacamore.
Is it likely that there is a fungus specialized on the petiole bases of dead sycamore leaves? Or should I attribute this to another explanation, perhaps related to the microclimate of that spot and/or the structural characteristics of the sycamore petioles?