Certain desert plants exhibit a trait known as drought-induced dormancy, in which they cease growth during periods of extreme water scarcity, sometimes waiting out a dry stretch that lasts most of a year. This mechanism allows the plants to conserve resources and survive until the next rainfall. When researchers irrigated dormant specimens and monitored them continuously, they detected renewed photosynthesis the same afternoon, well before the soil surface had dried. The plants, in other words, resume normal physiological function within ____: a recovery rapid enough to exploit a storm that may pass in a single day.