Tufted annual; culms erect or geniculately ascending, up to 30 cm high. Leaf-blades up to 20 cm long, 2-4 mm wide; sheaths hirsute. Panicle up to 10 cm long, loose or dense. erect or nodding, the branches filiform, flexuous, bearing parallel clusters of spikelets, these usually all turned to one side. Spikelets narrowly wedge-shaped, fragile, 5-10-flowered, the upper 1-3 florets sometimes reduced, 35-70(-70) mm long including the awns, the lemmas overlapping at first but gaping and exposing the internodes at maturity; glumes with silvery-hyaline margins, the lower narrowly elliptic, 8-14 mm long, (l-)3-nerved, the upper narrowly lanceolate, 12-18 mm long, 5-nerved; lemmas linear-lanceolate in side view, the lowest 18-25 mm long, involute, herbaceous with silvery-hyaline margins, (5-)7-9-nerved, glabrous or pubescent, 2-toothed at the tip with a straight awn 15-45 mm long from between the teeth; palea shorter than the lemma, ciliate on the keels; anthers 0.6-1 mm long.

Type: Turkestan, Abolin 7496 (?TAK) and other syntypes.

Distribution: Pakistan (Baluchistan); Turkey eastwards to Central Asia (Turkmenia to Pamir-Alai) and Tibet; Northwest India.

Bromus sericeus has a similar distribution to Bromus tectorum but is apparently much less common. As it occurs in Baluchistan, Central Afghanistan and Tibet it may well be found in N.W.F.P. and Kashmir also.