Laxly caespitose perennial; culms 40-190 cm high. Leaf-blades up to 60 cm long, 6-15 mm wide, flat, sparsely hairy, the lower wider than the upper; sheaths pubescent with long, rigid, retrorse hairs. Panicle 15-40 cm long, very wide and lax, nodding, the lowest branch with a ciliate scale at the base, the pedicels 5-30 mm long. Spikelets narrowly oblong, laxly 4-12-flowered, 20-40 mm long, green or rarely purplish; lower glume subulate, 6-8 mm long, 1-nerved; upper glume lanceolate, 9-11 mm long, 3-nerved, mucronate or shortly awned; lemmas lanceolate with obscurely angled margins, the lower 10-13 mm long, 7-nerved, hairy on the margins and nerves, awned; awn straight, 4-7 mm long; palea distinctly shorter than the lemma, shortly ciliolate on the keels; anthers 1.5-3.5(-4) mm long.

Fl. & Fr. Per.: June-August.

Type locality: British Isles.

Distribution: Pakistan (Punjab, N.W.F.P. & Kashmir); Europe; western and Central Asia.

Wood Brome is a very widespread species in Europe and Asia and is morphologically rather variable. In Europe and the more northerly parts of Asia it intergrades with Bromus benekenii (Lange) Trimen from which it differs in its open (not contracted) panicle, hairy (rather than glabrous) upper leaf-sheaths and the ciliate (not glabrous) scale at the base of the lowest panicle branch. A number of specimens in Pakistan very closely approach Bromus benekenii. Bromus sipyleus Boiss., a species, from Asia Minor, is similar to Bromus ramosus, differing mainly by its glabrous spikelets; the species is not very well known and may account for a number of a typical specimens of Bromus ramosus that are found throughout Asia. Much work still needs to be done on this part of Bromus.

Although the holotype of Bromus chitralens is was not available for study, three of the six collections cited in Flora Iranica were seen and there is no evidence that this species is substantially different from Bromus ramosus.