Is a sugar maple common in central Indiana?
The signature tree of central Indiana's beech-maple woodlots and abundant in remnant woods across Marion, Hamilton and Boone counties, plus older neighborhoods where the original topsoil survived. Because it is off the recommended street-tree list, nearly everything you quote on is either a woodlot survivor stranded inside new development or a 1950s-70s yard tree, and Purdue's climate assessment projects declining habitat suitability for it in Indiana later this century.
Why that matters for tree work
It is the tree everyone wants and the one that quietly dies in a subdivision — sugar maple is among the least salt- and compaction-tolerant shade trees there is, and it is no longer recommended for street planting anywhere in the Midwest. A sugar maple fifteen feet off a salted road on stripped subdivision clay is on a decline clock from the day it goes in, which is why so many central Indiana quotes on this species are removals of trees that are only forty years old.
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