I am trying to track the distributional extent of geosuffretex plant individuals (i.e. underground trees that have an extensive branching network underground with above-ground branchlets).

I have dug some up in a postfire environment - much easier to dig, but one can lose track of which species you're digging up as many of the characters are burnt off - and they can be pretty extensive (record is >50 m).

Digging an individual is pretty much impossible once the vegetation has returned post-fire, so I'd like to see if I can identify individuals genetically.

To be clear, I have a number of geosuffretex species that I am interested in, and I wish it identify the extent of a single individual within a species (i.e. not confuse it with another individual). The species are easy to tell apart morphologically.

Using RAPDs seems to make the most sense to me, but I don't seem to be able to find a paper where it has been used for DNA fingerprinting of plants plus there seems to be issues of reproducibility across laboratories. Is this the way to go, or is there another avenue I could investigate?

Thanks in advance for your time,

Alastair