Is a box elder a good tree to plant in Indiana?
Think hard about it — box elder is on the hazard list in central Indiana. Native to every county in Indiana and completely at home here, most abundant along creeks, ditches, fencerows and the neglected back edges of subdivision lots. Nurseries do not sell it, so effectively every one you quote on grew itself — which means it is almost always standing in exactly the wrong place.
What you'd be signing up to clean up
The samaras ripen in fall but hang on all winter and rain down through late winter and early spring, so the seed mess arrives in the months nobody has budgeted for cleanup — and then germinates in every mulch bed. Add continuous small deadwood year-round and, on female trees, the box elder bugs that follow the seed straight into the siding and window frames.
Where to keep it away from
Shallow and opportunistic, and critically it sprouts readily from both stumps and roots after cutting, which is why a box elder taken down without stump treatment returns as a thicket within two seasons. It seeds itself into cracked driveway edges, window wells and foundation gaps, where the roots chase whatever moisture is escaping and make the eventual removal awkward and hand-dug.
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