Tufted annual; culms 15-75 cm high, erect or ascending. Leaf-blades 4-20 cm long, 2-6.5 mm wide, scabrid above, smooth beneath; ligule 2.5-3.5 mm long. Panicle narrowly to broadly ovate, 65-27 cm long, loose to very loose, the branches in subwhorls and capillary to rather stiff. Spikelets 45-11 mm long, 3-11-flowered, the uppermost floret often a rudiment; lower glume lanceolate, acute, 1.3-2.5 mm long; upper glume narrowly ovate, acute or subacute, 2-3 mm long; lemmas ovate-elliptic, 3-3.5 mm long, obtuse, abruptly acute or very shortly acuminate, glabrous or minutely hairy on the keel and marginal nerves below, scaberulous on the back; anthers 1.4-2.5 mm long.

Fl. & Fr. Per.: April-May.

Type: Caucasus, Szowits (LE).

Distribution: Pakistan (Baluchistan); throughout the Middle East from Turkey and the Caucasus mountains to Afghanistan.

Plants with longer anthers (1.5-2.5 mm), ± glabrous lemmas and more florets in each spikelet are sometimes separated as subsp. multiradiata (Trautv.) Tzvelev, but the distinction between this and subsp. persica is not at all clear in Pakistan. Rechinger 28971 is probably an example of subsp. multiradiata.

1400-1900 m.