But where is that lack of water, in the environment, or in
the plant? I prefer to clarify this and say that drought
tolerance is the ability of the plant to survive in a habitat
that becomes dry. Desiccation tolerance is the ability of
the plant to survive periods during which the cells are
water-stressed and the plant itself has become dry; it suffers
dehydration of all its metabolic systems. For sake of
clarity, let us consider drought to be a condition of the
environment and desiccation to be a condition of the plant,
in this case the bryophyte. For tracheophytes, drought in
the environment nearly always causes desiccation in the
plant, but for bryophytes, this may not so often be the case.