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Desert plant communities that have been destroyed have recuperated within approximately 30 years. The swift recovery of plant cover is enabled, in part, by the inherent fast rate of re-establishment and turn-over of perennial plants of such communities, selected for those traits during thousands of years of intensive human interference. Such acquired traits are characteristic of several desert shrub communities, e.g. Serphidium sieberi and Zygophyllum dumosum associations. These shrub associations are stable, though the turnover rate of their constituent species is very rapid, i.e. 3-5 years for the various species of Helianthemum and Reaumuria. (C) 1998 Academic Press Limited.