His illustrated manuscripts, his notebooks, and his watercolours and drawings represent a valuable documentary source to learn about many aspects of the society and the natural environment of Tenerife and the rest of the Canary Islands during the first half of the 19th century.

In 1810, at the age of 17, Alfred Diston arrives at Puerto de La Orotava after being hired by the British firm Pasley, Little & Co.,[3] a company that exported wine from the Canary Islands.

Diston was characterized by having a multifaceted curiosity (ethnography, history, botany, geology, meteorology...), by his taste for travelling and by his observation skills, which is reflected in his meticulous drawings, his calligraphy and his numerous notebooks with annotations of all sorts.

At eight o’clock in the evening, whilst playing checkers with his wife, Mr Alfred Diston, Protestant English who had been living among us since 1810, dies suddenly [...].

[5] At the age of 17, Diston arrives at Puerto de La Orotava as an employee of Pasley, Little & Co., a firm that exports whine from the Canary Islands.

In his watercolours and gouaches, Diston shows in extensive detail the characteristics of the islands, as well as the considerably varied popular clothing, and the different local colours, professions and customs.

Despite the recognition of his contemporaries (locals and foreigners), Alfred Diston's work went unnoticed until one of his descendants [12] highlighted the value of his manuscripts and remarks (1931;[13] 1944 [9]), because they contributed to the knowledge of the traditional costumes and society of the Canary Islands in the first half of the 19th century.

In 2002, after a large monographic exhibition of his work and figure,[14] his name and importance began to become known, not only at academic and specialised levels but also in folkloric and popular settings.

His dual status as British and Canarian (by adoption), his welcoming personality and his knowledge of the Canaries motivated many of the visitors to Tenerife, mostly English speakers, to seek his collaboration as an informant, host, guide or simple companion.

I arrived here late last evening, lame and worn out with fatigue ; and to-day have taken up my residence during my stay in this place with Mr. Alfred Diston, an English merchant, a gentleman no less distinguished for general information than for the friendly services which he has rendered scientific men who have visited these regions".

After a protracted and satisfactory visit at Port Orotava, I took leave of my intelligent and hospitable friend, Mr. Diston, whose kind attentions I gratefully acknowledge, and shall long cherish them in my remembrance".

[6]Among the most renowned, we can mention the English botanist Philip Barker Webb and the French naturalist Sabin Berthelot, co-authors of the four volumes of the monumental work Histoire Naturelle des Iles Canaries (Paris, 1836-1850).

Alfred Diston corresponded and exchanged notes and drawings with two of the most relevant scholar of Tenerife at the time: the writer Antonio Pereira Pacheco (1790-1858),[23][24] prebendary of the Cathedral of San Cristóbal de La Laguna and parish priest of the parish of Tegueste; and the chronicler of Puerto de La Cruz, José Agustín Álvarez Rixo (1796-1883).

The renowned prebendary Pacheco was a historian, a scholar and author of a great variety of manuscripts on different subjects that, just as Diston did, illustrated his work with his own drawings, some of them of costumes and uniforms.

Likewise, he had collected several historical curiosities about these islands, merits for which he deserves to be remembered, as have some of the travellers that were referred to the firm Pasley, Little & Co., under Diston's management".

He inventoried the different plant collections and intervened in the resolution of different disputes related to the water supply, salary arrears and complaints about the gardener's work.

[27] In 1819, he managed to acclimatise various Maranta arundinacea rhizomes from Madeira in the country estate that his boss, Archibald Little, had in Puerto de La Orotava, a garden known today as Jardín Sitio Litre.

In the year 1824, Mr. Alfred Diston, a curious Scotsman who grew up in Puerto de la Cruz, on a trip to his homeland Scotland, saw the dwarf banana from the East Indies—whose botanical name is Musa Cavendish—in the garden of Sir Thomas Hempburen and took a plant that he brought to Tenerife, where it has proliferated admirably, inasmuch as it has three advantages over the plantains or bananas that we have previously known, they are: less risk of the winds affecting its growth, due to its short elevation and the sturdiness of its trunk; it reaches its full growth before the others, and it also produces a larger cluster.

The desire and impatience to multiply this admirable plant everywhere caused someone to steal the crop that Mr. Diston had in his orchard in Cueva del Pino in 1853, a violent procedure worthy of punishment, if those responsible for the deed had been discovered.

[35] The newspaper reported that “seven years earlier”, in 1846, Alfred Diston introduced the variety of Musa Cavendish in Puerto de La Orotava:BANANAS.

We do not want to conclude this article without expressing some recent observations on a species of dwarf bananas native to Cochinchina that Mr. Alfred Diston introduced in these islands about seven years ago.

This excellent fruit of rich and exquisite flavour has propagated extraordinarily in La Orotava, and even in this capital; whether it be because it is preferable to those of a more ordinary sort, because it lacks sapwood, or because of its yield: some bunches weighed 73 pounds and had 255 bananas each.

This species is known by the scientific name of Musa Cavendishia, but the most peculiar thing is that said plant, native to warm regions or at least with very mild weather, was brought to these islands from Scotland by Mr. Diston, who obtained three original seedlings from the greenhouse of Sir Thomas Hepburer (sic) that have successfully proliferated in our country.

[35] Álvarez Rixo also writes:"Around this time began the efforts to cultivate the dwarf banana in all the orchards of our Puerto where several seedlings had been stolen and taken to Sta.

[39] On 29 August 1814, accompanied by three Britons and an American, he climbed from Puerto de La Orotava to the top of the “Peak”,[40] the name that foreign travellers gave to the volcano Teide (12,198 ft.).

In Costumes he includes a table with monthly records of temperatures (maximum, minimum, average), as well as rainfall (number of days of rain) and winds (directions and intensity).

His contemporary Jose Agustín Álvarez Rixo even referred to him as “the best calligrapher in perhaps the entire province”,[47] which is exemplified in both a missal[9] and in two prayer books that he illuminated for the use of his devout Catholic wife.

From his first journey (Nov. 1822-Apr.1823), there are still a detailed diary and a wide variety of illustrations with different popular types from the Mediterranean (Maltese, Greeks, Turks) and from the non-British population of Gibraltar (Spanish, Jews and Berbers).

With maps, engravings and tables), written by Francis Coleman MacGregor, British consul in Tenerife from 1830 to 1835, published in Hannover by Hahnschen Buchhandlung.

[16] This Foundation, which has the largest collection of British art outside of Great Britain, has fifty-nine plates by Alfred Diston, forty-two of which represent figures and the rest are landscapes of Tenerife.