The council had received just 52 nominations over the last five years for additions to its significant tree schedule, most of those in the past month.
Council city development landscape architect Barry Knox said more than 1200 trees were on the schedule, not including the council's own trees.
''Some of them obviously fall off the list and some get added . . . it is not going up hugely and in fact the recent requests we have got is not a huge number,'' he said.
People could nominate trees at any time but the schedule was only updated every few years. The last time was in 2008 and the deadline for the next schedule update had now passed.
Some people had nominated trees that were not on their own property, including a totara in MacAndrew Bay that was thought to have been popular to tie boats up to.
''This tree was where the boats that used to travel from Port Chalmers to Dunedin used to tie up to drop off and collect passengers and supplies,'' the nominator wrote.
Other trees nominated were much-loved specimens on people's own sections, including a huge elm tree belonging to Belleknowes resident Lynn Moodie.
''We love it and it is so big and we wanted to make sure it was protected. We would hate anything to happen to it.''
The trees nominated would now be assessed by council staff, using an established procedure for determining significance.
Once a tree was on the schedule, people would need to apply for a free resource consent before maintenance work was done to make sure the work would not damage the tree.
