Journeys
The expeditions, reassembled
Every dated label is a diary entry. Read a collector’s labels in order and the voyage comes back: the islands in sequence, the days at each, the specimens from every stop. 173 journeys so far, 1903 to 2003, 63,883 specimens between them.
63 collectors and expeditions3,776 days in the field960,284 km between stops46,480 photographed specimens
173 journeys match

Otto Herman Swezey
Oʻahu and Hawaiʻi Island · May – Jun 1919
Otto Herman Swezey in Oʻahu and Hawaiʻi Island, May – June 191953 specimens · 6 stops · 31 days · 232 km


Brenda Bishop
3 islands of the United States · 3–18 Aug 1963
Brenda Bishop in Molokaʻi, Oʻahu and Kauaʻi, 3–18 August 196349 specimens · 2 stops · 16 days · 50 km



Elwood Curtin Zimmerman
Kauaʻi and Oʻahu · Jan – Feb 1935
Elwood Curtin Zimmerman in Kauaʻi and Oʻahu, January – February 193542 specimens · 4 stops · 21 days · 179 km



Elwood Curtin Zimmerman
Oʻahu · 9–28 May 1943
Elwood Curtin Zimmerman in Oʻahu, 9–28 May 194374 specimens · 2 stops · 20 days



Elwood Curtin Zimmerman
Oʻahu · 11–20 Nov 1934
Elwood Curtin Zimmerman in Oʻahu, 11–20 November 193463 specimens · 3 stops · 10 days
How a journey is found
Every specimen with a full date (year, month and day; a bare “1 January” is treated as a missing day) and a named collector is a diary entry. For each collector the days are read in order, each day given the place most of its labels name. The place where a collector spent more than forty percent of their days, and at least sixty of them, is home: days there are left out.
A gap of more than 21 days between collecting days ends one journey and begins the next. A journey must run five to four hundred days, hold at least forty specimens and touch at least two places. Within it, consecutive days inside the same or a neighbouring tenth-of-a-degree cell (about eleven kilometres) are one stop; the stop’s point is the mean of its labels’ coordinates, or the island’s centre when none carry any.
Companions are collectors whose own labels put them in the same cell on the same days. Staff can name a journey, write about it, feature it or hide it; those words survive every rebuild. Everything else is read off the specimens and rebuilt by harvest.mjs expeditions as the records improve.
