A novel halophilic bacterium, designated strain MSS4T, was isolated from the solar salterns of Mesolongi, Greece. The micro-organism, a motile, Gram-stain-positive, aerobic rod, proliferated at salinities of 1.0–4.0 M NaCl, with optimal growth at 2.5 M NaCl. Endospores were not observed. Strain MSS4T showed optimal growth at 37 °C and pH 8.0. The G+C content of its DNA was 47.2 mol%. The polar lipid pattern of strain MSS4T consisted of diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidic acid and phosphatidylethanolamine. It possessed anteiso-C15 : 0, C18 : 0, C16 : 0 and anteiso-C17 : 0 as the major fatty acids (altogether representing 84.7 % of the total). The predominant isoprenoid quinone was MK-7. The cell-wall peptidoglycan contained meso-diaminopimelic acid. 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis showed that the new isolate has 96.1 % similarity to Bacillus qingdaonensis CM1T and Bacillus aidingensis 17-5T, 95.5 % to Bacillus salarius BH169T and lower similarity to other Bacillus species. These results justify the assignment of strain MSS4T to a novel species within the genus Bacillus, for which the name Bacillus halochares sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is MSS4T (=LMG 24571T =DSM 21373T).