The simplest and most common treatment of greenery in the Canterbury cases is a garland surrounding the head, sometimes small but can be much larger. For some the recognisable feature is that the leaves and branches trail out of the mouth. For some the greenery extends over the face as a flat disc, or flows over the chin, or covers the whole face , or is frankly indescribable. With lion heads it is often hard to distinguish mane from greenery – both shown above have wild grimaces and extended tongues. On rare occasions, the image is of a known subject (Image 14), and occasionally the colouration is red or gold (Image 15). Some include hints of greenery but the main impact is of wild mythical creatures that defy classification.
DL