Elsie McElroy Slater

Slater was an artist, author, gardener, and self-trained scientist based in El Paso. She had a strong focus on regional natural history, creating watercolor illustrations of local plants, keeping field journals, and writing poetry, newspaper articles, and longer works, such as A Hundred Flowers of the Mexican Border at El Paso (1933), Thirteen Ferns of the Mexican Border at El Paso (1939), and El Paso Birds (1945). Slater was also noted as one of the first to collect and press local plants from the Chihuahuan Desert, many of which are preserved in the Herbarium at the University of Texas at El Paso. At the same time, she managed to keep close ties to the broader scientific community. Slater shared friendships with the Witte Museum founder, Ellen Quillin, as well as with the federal biologists, Florence and Vernon Bailey, and also maintained correspondence with the esteemed botanists Elmer Wooton (New Mexico State University and the USDA) and Paul Standley (Smithsonian and Field Museum).