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. Usually a shrub or procumbent tree, it may reach 6–7 m in height in sheltered locations. It is found on various isolated islands, including the Tristan da Cunha group and Gough Island, in the South Atlantic Ocean, as well as Amsterdam Island in the southern Indian Ocean.[2][3]
While there is a second tree species, Sophora cassioides, 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. However, this was not always the case. 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). This forest was so dense that getting through was virtually impossible. In 1875, Velain estimated that the forest still covered a maximum of 250 hectares.
The last volcanic eruption of 1792 and the resulting fires may have been the reason for the disappearance of the Amsterdam Island forest. In the mid-1980s, only a few fragments of the former forest remained.
The extreme decline in the Phylica population is primarily the result of human deforestation, fires and cattle that Heurtin (a colonist from La Réunion) had released. After part of the herds were eradicated in the south of the island in 1988 and protective fences were installed, a protection program allowed the replanting of 7 000 trees. The seeds from the remaining specimens were used. Today the Grand Bois – a protected area – is the last dense Phylica stand on the eastern slope, covers an area of just 10 hectares (0.2% of the island's area)
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