Look closely at the stone carvings in an old European church, high on a column capital, tucked into a roof boss, or peering out from the wooden underside of a choir seat, and there is a good chance you will find a face made of leaves. Sometimes the leaves sprout from his mouth, sometimes they grow from his eyes or frame his head like a mane. He is usually called the Green Man, and he is one of the most widespread and mysterious images in medieval art.

What the Carvings Actually Show

Art historians generally sort these figures into a few types. Some are faces entirely composed of leaves. Others are human faces with foliage sprouting from the mouth, nose, or eyes, sometimes called disgorging heads. A third type shows a face peering out from surrounding leaves. Oak, acanthus, hawthorn, ivy, and vine leaves are all common, and the style varies enormously, from serene and almost gentle to grotesque and unsettling.

These foliate heads are especially common in English and French churches from roughly the 12th to the 16th centuries, but the idea is much older. Leafy masks appear in Roman decorative art, and the motif traveled through early medieval Europe before flourishing in the Gothic period. Famous examples include the extraordinary naturalistic foliage carvings in the chapter house of Southwell Minster in England, and Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, which is said to contain over a hundred foliate heads.

A Surprisingly Modern Name

Here is the twist most people do not expect: the medieval carvers never called him the Green Man. The name was popularized in 1939 by the folklorist Lady Julia Raglan, who used it in an article in the journal Folklore to connect church carvings with English May Day traditions and the pub name The Green Man. Her theory, that the carvings preserved a pagan spirit of vegetation that survived inside Christian churches, was hugely influential, and it is why so many people now see the Green Man as an ancient nature god.

Many historians are more cautious. There is little direct evidence that medieval people understood these faces as a pagan deity, and within a Christian setting they may have carried very different meanings: resurrection and rebirth, the cycle of the seasons, human sin, or simply the stonemason’s love of foliage. The honest answer is that we do not know exactly what the carvers intended, and the meaning may well have differed from church to church.

Green Figures in Folk Custom and Story

Whatever the carvings meant, green figures do appear elsewhere in European tradition, which is part of why Lady Raglan’s idea caught on.

• Jack-in-the-Green was an English May Day figure, a person dancing inside a tall wicker frame covered in leaves and flowers. The custom was strongly associated with chimney sweeps in 18th and 19th century London, and it has been revived in towns such as Hastings, where it is still celebrated today.
• The Green Knight of the 14th century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a giant, green-skinned stranger who survives beheading, an eerie figure often read in connection with the renewal of nature.
• Robin Hood and the wildwood tradition, with its outlaws dressed in Lincoln green, also fed the romantic image of a spirit of the greenwood.

How to Find a Green Man Yourself

• Look up. Roof bosses, where the ribs of a vaulted ceiling meet, are a favorite spot. Binoculars help.
• Check the capitals at the tops of columns, where foliage carving is common.
• Tip up the misericords. Where it is allowed, the small carved ledges under choir seats often hide playful figures, including foliate heads.
• Watch pub signs and old buildings. The Green Man remains a common pub name, and leafy faces turn up in Victorian architecture too.

Why He Still Speaks to Us

Even with his history uncertain, the Green Man has become a powerful modern symbol of the bond between people and the living world. A human face dissolving into leaves suggests that we are part of nature rather than separate from it, and that idea feels especially resonant now. It is no surprise that he appears in garden sculptures, environmental movements, and nature-inspired art. If you love old symbols like this, you might also enjoy the folklore of fairy rings and the secret language of wildflowers.

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Old woodland symbols like the Green Man inspire many of our watercolor prints, available in our Etsy shop, NaturalEMNB.