Is a swamp white oak a good tree to plant in Indiana?
Swamp White Oak can work here, with caveats. Native to Indiana, naturally a bottomland and wet-flat tree, and widely recommended by Midwest extension programs as the urban replacement for the overplanted pin oak. That is why you now find it on newer subdivision streets and detention-basin edges around Indianapolis roughly as often as in the wild here.
What you'd be signing up to clean up
Acorns come down on unusually long stalks, an inch to three inches of stem, often paired, and frequently with cap and peduncle still attached — heavy crops every three to five years. Younger trees also shed papery curling strips of bark exposing orange inner bark, which people regularly call in as a disease and which is completely normal.
Where to keep it away from
Shallow to medium depth and very wide spreading — wider than the crown — which is precisely why it survives saturated clay subsoil that kills deeper-rooted species, and the wetter the site the shallower it stays. It has no meaningful taproot, so it transplants and establishes easily for an oak, but those broad surface roots will eventually run under and lift a narrow sidewalk or a thin driveway apron.
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