Charlotte Cortlandt Ellis

Ellis is known to have collected over 980 plant specimens of at least 345 species, at least a few of which were used to create the formal scientific description and name of that particular taxon of plant.[4] She did not maintain a numbering system and her specimens are spread out over at least fourteen herbaria,[4] and are thus not maintained in a separate collection. These include those at the local University of New Mexico (2 sheets) and the New Mexico State University (75) herbaria, but also the United States National Herbarium and the herbaria of the New York Botanical Gardens and the Missouri Botanical Gardens. Because many of her collections were of very common plants, the majority of these voucher specimens have likely disappeared in the general collections -many millions of sheets by thousands of collectors, and have never been indexed for the database, thus some 80% of her are now 'lost' somewhere, but the specimens which are housed in New Mexican herbaria are indexed and accessible. Almost all, if not all, of her collections were made in the Sandia Mountains in the 1900s to 1910s.[3] As at February 2021 specimens collected by Ellis have been used to help enable 18 recent scientific publications.[4]

The holotype specimens she discovered and collected include Primula ellisiae (a synonym of P. rusbyi),[5] Dodecatheon ellisiae (now D. dentatum subsp. ellisiae)[6] and Astragalus praelongus var. ellisiae.[7] These plants were named in her honour.[3] She also collected the holotypes of Achillea laxiflora (a synonym of A. millefolium)[8] and Tium stenolobum (a synonym of Astragalus scopulorum).[9] She sent an Opuntia specimen she collected in 1910 in the mountains near Placitas to Joseph Nelson Rose.[10]