The Shovel of Plants is a dramatic poetic form concerning family, originating in The Tress of Bewildering. The rules of the form are applied by poets to produce individual poems which can be recited. The poem is a single quatrain. Forms of parallelism are common throughout the poem, in that certain lines often share an underlying meaning and they use the same placement of allusions. The first line must make use of simile. It has five syllables. The second line must make use of simile. It has seven syllables. The third line has seven syllables. The fourth line has seven syllables.