"Dormant form" refers to a state of rest or inactivity in which something is temporarily inactive or not actively growing or functioning. Full definition
The «space station» is a primitive diatom of the species Stephanodiscus, and the «shuttle craft» are scales from algal cysts, dormant forms of algae. (newscientist.com)
Instead, the changed CPEB became a fast - replicating, active version of its normally dormant form. (discovermagazine.com)
If I take the poetry analogy further, and compare these paintings to O'Hara's lunch poems and Ted Berrigan's The Sonnets, which singlehandedly revitalized a largely dormant form, I get the sense that Greenbaum is determined to extricate the intimately scaled painting from the state of familiarity that had settled over it, and make it new, as her predecessors did, by showing no sign of settling into a style or mode of production. (brooklynrail.org)