Phylica arborea, also known as the Island Cape myrtle, is a shrub or small tree with narrow needle-like dark green leaves, downy silver on the underside, and with greenish white terminal flowers.

[3][4] While there is a second tree species, Sophora macnabiana, in the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, to which Gough belongs, Phylica arborea is the only woody plant on Amsterdam Island and now grows almost only on the eastern slope of the island.

In 1726, Valentyn described a Phylica forest in the form of a belt between 100–250 meters in altitude and an area of 1 500 ha (approximately 27% of the island's surface).

The last volcanic eruption of 1792 and the resulting fires may have been the reason for the disappearance of the Amsterdam Island forest.

The extreme decline in the Phylica population is primarily the result of human deforestation, fires and cattle that Heurtin (a colonist from Réunion) had released.