Tufted perennial; culms 25-110 cm high, erect or geniculately ascending, slender or stout. Leaf-blades flat, 6-20 cm long, 1.5-5 mm wide, smooth or scaberulous. Spike often flexuous, usually nodding, 5-15 cm long. Spikelets paired (sometimes in threes) at the nodes of the rhachis, shortly but distinctly pedicelled; glumes elliptic or narrowly lanceolate, 4-9 mm long, much shorter than the body of the lowest lemma, conspicuously 1-3-nerved, acute or produced into a short awn up to 2 mm long; lemma lanceolate, 8-11 mm long (excluding the awn), scabrid or shortly hairy, acute, produced into a flexuous awn 15-30 mm long.

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

Type: Northwest India, Thomson..

Distribution: Pakistan (N.W.F.P., Gilgit & Kashmir); Central Asia and the Himalayas.

Very similar to Elymus sibiricus Linn. which differs only in having sessile spikelets and glumes with an awn as long as the body of the glume. Elymus sibiricus has been erroneously recorded for Pakistan through confusion with Elymus nutans.

2700-5000m.