Plants perennial, annual, or biennial; usually cespitose, sometimes rhizomatous.
Culms 5-190 cm.
Sheaths closed to near the top, usually pubescent;
auricles usually absent;
ligules membranous, to 6 mm, usually erose or lacerate;
blades generally flat, rarely involute.
Inflorescences panicles, sometimes racemose, erect or nodding, open or dense, occasionally 1-sided;
branches usually ascending to spreading, sometimes reflexed or drooping.
Spikelets 5-70 mm, terete to laterally compressed, with 3-30 florets;
disarticulation above the glumes, beneath the florets.
Glumes unequal, usually shorter than the adjacent lemmas, always shorter than the spikelets, glabrous or pubescent, usually acute, rarely mucronate;
lower glumes 1-7(9)-veined;
upper glumes 3-9(11)-veined;
lemmas 5-13-veined, rounded to keeled, glabrous or pubescent, apices entire, emarginate, or toothed, usually terminally or subterminally awned, sometimes with 3 awns or unawned;
paleas usually shorter than the lemmas, ciliate on the keels, adnate to the caryopses;
anthers (2)3.
x = 7. Name from the Greek
bromos, an ancient name for -oats-, which was based on
broma, -food-.
©Utah State University; reproduced with permission.
Key to the species as recognized in the account from which the above description is copied.
