Annual; culms erect or geniculately ascending, up to 60 cm high. Leaf-blades up to 20 cm long, 2-5 mm wide, sheaths pubescent. Panicle 5-20 cm long, often suffused with purple, usually loose and spreading, up to 15 cm wide; branches ± whorled, l-4-spiculate, sometimes a little shorter than the spikelets but generally much longer, filiform and flexuous. Spikelets narrowly elliptic, 6-14-flowered, (15-)30-50 mm long excluding the awns, the lemmas overlapping and concealing the internodes; glumes glabrous or minutely hispidulous, the lower narrowly lanceolate, (8-)9-11 mm long, 3(-sub-5)-nerved, the upper narrowly ovate to lanceolate, 9-13 mm long, 5-7-nerved; lemmas narrowly elliptic in side view, the lower 12-18 mm long, herbaceous with broad hyaline margins not widened above the middle into an obtuse angle, 7-nerved, glabrous or minutely hispidulous, 2-toothed at the tip with acuminate teeth 1.5-2.5 mm long; awn subapical, flattened especially at the base, 15-30 mm long, longer than the lemma, erect at first, becoming reflexed and slightly twisted at maturity, palea shorter than the lemma, ciliolate on the keels; anthers 1.5-2 mm long.

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

Type: Dzhungaria, Schrenk (LE).

Distribution: Pakistan (Baluchistan, N.W.F.P., Gilgit & Kashmir); Central Asia from Afghanistan to Northwest India; Pamir, Tien Shan, Dzungaria and western Mongolia.

Bromus oxyodon is similar to Bromus pectinatus, especially when young, but can be distinguished by its longer glumes, its relatively longer and strongly reflexed (when mature) awn and its more open panicle suffused with purple.