Short-lived perennial tussock grass; culms erect or geniculately ascending, up to ± 1 m high. Leaf-blades up to 30 cm long and 8 mm wide; sheaths glabrous or pubescent. Panicle oblong, 10-40 cm long, loose. Spikelets oblong-ovate, 6-12 flowered, 16-40 mm long, strongly laterally compressed, the lemmas closely overlapping and concealing the short intemodes; glumes narrowly lanceolate in side view, the lower 10-15 mm long, a little shorter than the upper, accuminate, the lemmas narrowly lanceolate in side view, the lower 15-20 mm long laterally ,fattened and sharply keeled, herbaceous with hyaline margins, 9-13-nerved, scaberulous on the nerves, minutely 2-toothed with an awn-point up to 3 mm long from between the teeth; palea shorther than the lemma, ciliolate on the keels; anthers 0.3-0.6 mm long.

Type: Peru, Dombey (P).

Distribution: Pakistan (Punjab & N.W.F.P.; introduced); a South American species widely introduced as a winter forage species under the name “Rescue Grass”, and now found as an escape in most temperate countries.

Bromus catharticus (Bromus unioloides) and Bromus willdenowii are segregates from an imperfectly known South American complex. The temptation to call Asian material anything other than Bromus catharticus should be resisted until the complex as a whole is more fully understood.