Is a pin oak a good tree to plant in Indiana?
Pin Oak can work here, with caveats. Pin oak is native to Indiana bottomlands and imperfectly drained soils and was planted extremely widely as a landscape tree across central Indiana. Purdue and Morton now both advise against planting it on high-pH sites, so the population here is largely legacy trees put in before that guidance landed.
What you'd be signing up to clean up
Pin oak drops small, round, shallow-capped acorns about a half inch across, and being a red oak it runs a two-year cycle, so mast years hit hard and then go quiet. The distinguishing mess is marcescence — dead brown leaves stay attached through winter on lower limbs and juvenile growth, then release in late winter and early spring, which means you rake this tree twice a year.
Where to keep it away from
Pin oak has a shallow, fibrous, widely spreading root system instead of a taproot, which is exactly why it transplants easily and why nurseries pushed it so hard. That shallow plate lets it tolerate the high water table and periodically saturated clay of newer subdivisions better than any other oak here, but it also makes the tree sensitive to drought, mower damage, grade fill, and the construction traffic that compacts the top layer where all its roots live.
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