old strip-cultivated common fields. These Ditchling assarts have occasionally partially or completely escaped improvement for farming (thus improving the biodiversity). Grass snakes like this damp countryside. The best 'assart' meadows are at the north end, though some have been damaged and others do not seem safe from damage. One small meadow next to the brook forms a sedge fen (), dominated by oval sedge, with tufted hair grass, ragged robin, and spearwort (2011). In summer, it is alive with butterflies. Next to it a drier meadow has some betony and heath grass. It has clouds of burnet moths and Ichneumon flies of many colours, grass moths and grasshoppers. On the east side of Jointer Copse there are two ancient lanes, Nye Lane and Wellcroft Lane, that cross each other, and make "a delightful tangle of stream, gullies, small pits and wooded banks" below some old oak trees. Surrounding this crossways are three fields which have been designated SNCI (Site of Nature Conservation Interest) status. The fields west of, and adjacent to The Nye () used to be rich in damp-loving valuable fen meadow plants, like sneezewort and pepper saxifrage, but the traditional pastures have been converted to hard-grazed horse paddocks. The tropical looking marsh helleborine orchid which has become vanishingly rare in the 21st centrum used to be found in numbers here. South of The Nye, there is still the archaic Southmead meadow () on Wellcroft Lane, which is still has much floristic value. It has retained its traditional management since the 1960s following a regime of summer hay cut and aftermath sheep grazing. David Bangs, a Sussex field naturalist, says,"It is a gem. In springtime drifts of Cowslips cover large parts, and, later on, there is abundant yellow rattle, ribwort plantain, knapweed, oxeye daisy and meadow barley. Adders tongue fern is very common. The mead lies half on the Gault, but the chalky influence is strong, with nettle leaved bellflower under the hedge. I have never seen cowslips so abundant on a Wealden site. It is an extraordinary survival, and a tribute to its owner's loving care (2013)". Woods Purchase Wood () is to the east of the parish and is separated from West Wood by the Westmeston/Ditchling parish border and a wide green lane with braided tracks. It is an ancient woodland with wild service and big old trees, but it is open and mown on its south