Well years later I'm still digging and I still haven't come to the bottom of the story. I have discovered almost a thousand sites where the Green Man can be found in Britain alone. Some of them like Exeter Cathedral, St Giles Cathedral Edinburgh and Southwell Minster contain numerous heads so that the actual number of Green Man images that I alone know of is probably in excess two thousand. A church like St Boniface's in Bunbury which only lists one Green Man in it's official handbook has in fact five as well as a Green Lion spewing branches from its mouth. Driving through Humberside and Lincolnshire a few weeks ago I found myself in a lovely village called Saxilby. Though I have never found any reference to Green Men appearing in the church there, I thought I might as well have a look since I'd plenty of time to spare. I found three fine Green Men carved into the bosses of the wooden roof above the north aisle.