Plants perennial; densely cespitose, not rhizomatous. Culms 6–90 cm, erect or nearly so, lower internodes not enlarged or bulbous. Sheaths of the flag leaves inflated; auricles not developed; ligules 1–2 mm, truncate, rounded, or obtuse; blades to 12(26) cm long, 1–6 mm wide, flat or convolute. Panicles 2–14(17) cm long, 4–10 mm wide, narrowly cylindrical, tapering distally; branches not adnate to the rachises. Glumes 2–3.7 mm, oblong-lanceolate, keels usually scabrous or shortly ciliate, sometimes smooth, apices not abruptly narrowed, awned, awns 0.3–0.5 mm; lemmas 2/3–3/4 as long as the glumes, glabrous or puberulent, apices acute; anthers about 1.5 mm. 2n = 14, 28.
Phleum phleoides is native to dry grasslands from Europe through central Asia. It was collected, in 1990, beside railroad tracks in Coquitlam, British Columbia.