Yup, their Green Man Page just about sums it up -

The Green Man is alive and well and can be found all over the country... You may know him as the Green Knight or Robin Hood, you will still see him around May Day as Jack in the Green, in Mumming plays and Morris dancing and maybe as the Green George, a relative of St George...

In parish churches and cathedrals look for him as a leafy head in roof bosses... misericords and bench ends...

However you see him, as a benign spirit, guardian of the female forests, symbol of new life and hope in spring, a signifier of regeneration, you will feel his presence in our ancient woods and forests... He has been our cultural companion for millennia, reminding us of our close relationship with nature...

Happily, such bullshit is by way of post-modern fakelore. Unhappily, it has become the all-prevailing orthodoxy as the true wonders of The Green Man are overlooked. Whatever the case - and whatever you might wish to call them - the Green Man carvings are in no way, shape or form unique to England, and predate by some centuries any folkloric associations (pub names, Jacks-in-the-Green etc.) only very recently imagined: in academia 1939; in popular culture around 1970.

This is the Fakelore of The re-Imagined Village; in the church adjoining our waterside village pub (perhaps our fake pub is called The Green Man, after that in The Wicker Man?) we might gaze in wonder at the tortured disgorging features of the foliate heads carved on the bench-ends (such as we see HERE: Benchend, 1534, The Church of the Holy Ghost, Crowcombe, Somerset, 13th June 2009) only to be told by the helpful imaginary guide sheet that we are, in fact, seeing a benign spirit, guardian of the female forests, symbol of new life and hope in spring, a signifier of regeneration etc. etc..

In The re-Imagined Village, Frazerian perspectives of Folklore are of greater importance to the Anglican Church than the theology of the faith they superseded, in which case it no surprise to find that the master-carver of the above linked image has been so keen to leave us the date of its execution! In The re-Imagined Village, the wayward & often hilarious perceptions of our Hapless Repatriate are often no more wayward & hilarious than those of the natives with whom he seeks to assimilate. Like Folk Music however, Folklore is just as illusory...

Now for an imaginary glass of Dandelion & Burdock. Phew! What a scorcher!