I often see that plants are advertised with an expected height in a garden and a height it reaches in the wild. The garden height is always smaller than what it reaches in the wild, which confuses me because I would have thought the extra attention of a garden would result in the opposite.

e.g.
http://www.daleysfruit.com.au/plant/Golden-Penda-Xanthostemon-Chrysanthus.htm

The reason for this, is that many of the plants that we grow in our gardens, have been hybridized down from these native wild plants, and in doing so, they have been propagated to to grow smaller to fit into the landscape. Alot of the growing habits have been altered by plant breeders to get this smaller version of the wild plant, tree, or shrub, which ever it may be. Hope this answers your question.

**Billy Ray**

My guess would be that in the wild plants are generally more crowded and young trees will grow very tall trying to reach the sun. While in a garden, they are planted in more open spaces and don't need to reach a great height to get sunlight. Garden trees tend to be more widespread than tall.