Annual; culms erect or geniculately ascending, up to 50 cm high. Leaf-blades up to 20 cm long, 2-4(-5.5) mm wide; sheaths glabrous or hirsute. Inflorescence a dense, lamp-brush panicle, sometimes interrupted, cuneate at the base, rounded at the top, 4-7 cm long, 1.5-2.5 cm wide; branches very short, rarely more than 3-4 mm long, always shorter than the spikelets. Spikelets narrowly elliptic-oblong, 7-12(-16)-flowered, 10-25(-30) mm long excluding the awns, glabrous or pubescent, the lemmas overlapping, concealing the internodes; lower glume lanceolate, 4-7 mm long, 3-5-nerved; upper glume narrowly elliptic, 4.5-8.5 mm long, 5-7-nerved; lemmas narrowly oblanceolate in side view, the lower 6-11 mm long, herbaceous with hyaline margins and tip, 7-nerved, 2-toothed at the tip, the teeth triangular-acute, 1.3-2.5 mm long, awned from between the teeth; awns 5-15 mm long, flattened, erect at first, horizontally recurved at maturity, the upper longer than the lower; palea shorter than the lemma, reaching to the base of the sinus, ciliolate on the keels; anthers 0.35-0.65(-0.85) mm long.

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

Type: Spain (?LINN).

Distribution: Pakistan (Baluchistan, N.W.F.P. & Kashmir); Europe and the Mediterranean region eastwards to Northwest India.

Bromus scoparius is a variable species often divided into a number of varieties of which the best known is that with hairy spikelets, var. villiglumis.