Annual; culms erect or geniculately ascending, up to 65 cm high. Leaf-blades up to 16 cm long, 2-6.5 mm wide; sheaths pubescent. Panicle 6-16 cm long, rather narrow with short erect branches usually shorter than the spikelets or the lowermost branches longer, rather stout. Spikelets narrowly elliptic, 6-16 flowered, 25-40 mm long excluding the awns, the lemmas overlapping and concealing the internodes; glumes glabrous or hairy, the lower lanceolate, 7-9 mm long, 3(-5)-nerved, the upper narrowly ovate, 9-11 mm long, 5(-9)-nerved; lemmas narrowly elliptic in side view, the lower 11-14 mm long, herbaceous with broad hyaline margins not widened above the middle into an obtuse angle, 7-9-nerved, glabrous or pubescent, 2-toothed at the tip with acuminate teeth 1-2.5 mm long; awn subapical, somewhat flattened especially at the base, 15-25 mm long, erect at first, becoming reflexed and slightly twisted at maturity; palea shorter than the lemma, ciliolate on the keels; anthers 1.5-2.5 mm long.

Type: Europe, Roemer..

Distribution: Pakistan (Baluchistan); Europe and the Mediterranean region; through-out the Middle East and Central Asia.

Bromus lanceolatus, Bromus oxyodon and Bromus pectinatus together form a very confusing group of species. Bromus pectinatus usually has an open panicle, straight awns and lower glume up to about 7 mm long. Bromus lanceolatus is very similar in some respects hut the panicle is more compact with stout branches and the awns are stouter, longer and reflexed. Bromus oxydon and Bromus lanceolatus can best be separated by the compactness of the panicle, it being denser in the latter. Some specimens of Bromus scoparius have a somewhat looser than normal panicle and except by spikelet size and anther length, are difficult to tell from Bromus lanceolatus. Many herbarium specimens cannot be reliably assigned to their species and clearly much more work needs to be done to determine precisely where the specific boundaries lie.