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Amphicarpum differs from all other North American grass genera in its production of subterranean, cleistogamous spikelets. It has generally been reported that caryopses from the aerial spikelets fail to germinate, but McNamara and Quinn (1977) demonstrated that, at least in A. amphicarpon, this is not true. They found that the caryopses of aerial panicles and their seedlings were less robust than those of the subterranean spikelets. McNamara and Quinn concluded that the cleistogamous, subterranean spikelets usually contributed the largest number of plants to the populations, but that the chasmogamous aerial spikelets provided a potentially important source of genetic variability.
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