Plants perennial; not rhizomatous. Culms (60)70–140 cm, erect or spreading; nodes 5–9, pubescent or glabrous, often concealed by the sheaths; internodes usually glabrous. Sheaths usually retrorsely pilose, sometimes glabrous, with a dense line of hairs at the collar, lower sheaths often sericeous; auricles absent; ligules 0.4–1 mm, often hairy, truncate, erose, ciliolate; blades 15–30 cm long, 5–12 mm wide, often shiny yellow-green, flat, abaxial surfaces pilose, adaxial surfaces glabrous or pilose over the veins. Panicles 9–25 cm, open, nodding; branches ascending or spreading, often recurved. Spikelets 18–30 mm, elliptic to lanceolate, terete to moderately laterally compressed, often purplish, with 6–12 florets. Glumes usually pubescent; lower glumes 5.5–8 mm, 1(3)-veined; upper glumes 7–10 mm, 5-veined, often mucronate; lemmas 8–13 mm, elliptic to lanceolate, rounded over the midvein, usually uniformly densely hairy, or the backs less densely so, apices acute to obtuse, entire; awns 5–8 mm, straight, arising less than 1.5 mm below the lemma apices; anthers 2.8–3.5(5) mm. 2n = 14.
Bromus nottowayanus is native to the east-central and eastern United States, from Iowa to New York, south to Oklahoma, northern Alabama, and Virginia. It grows in damp, shaded woods, often in ravines and along streams.