196 PLATYLOBIUM FORMOSUM. 
training is requisite ; and the more so in consequence of the branches attaining a 
good length, and producing laterals most freely towards their points. Properly 
shortening such branches is the remedy to prevent specimens becoming straggling 
and ill-formed ; but it must be practised in the early stages of the plant's growth, as 
well to effect the desired object as to permit the newly-forming wood time to get well 
ripened, the flowers of the succeeding season being borne by it. 
It is a very interesting business, but certainly demands much attention and a 
good deal of skill, to train greenhouse plants so that they always keep in a pleasing 
shape. We meet with them generally either forming too dense bushes, or they are 
much too open. The size of the leaves of each species, and its style of growing, 
should regulate the matter ; whatever may be the dimensions of the former or the 
character of the latter, they ought never to be more abundant on the one hand, than 
that each branch, and, it may be, each leaf, seems at ease, and quite free of its 
neighbour ; on the other, no greater space should be allowed to every branch than it 
can fully occupy. The care usually bestowed on greenhouse plants, as to the selec- 
tion of soil to grow them in, their increase, &c, is sufficient for P. formosum. 
Platys, broad, and lobos, a pod, in reference to the broad legumes, is the origin 
of the generic name. 
