Bloomington, IN Invasive Plant Rules: Prohibited Species (2026)

080(e) of Bloomington's Unified Development Ordinance flatly states that species identified in Table 04-18 are unacceptable and shall not be planted, citing invasive characteristics, weak wood, and abundant litter as the reasons. The prohibited-invasive-trees portion of that table names well-known landscape offenders by both common and scientific name, including Hedge Maple, Amur Maple, Norway Maple, Sycamore Maple, Tree-of-Heaven, Callery Pear and all of its cultivars, and European or Common Buckthorn and all of its cultivars, among others. The table goes beyond invasive trees to separate categories for plants with merely poor or nuisance characteristics, such as Box Elder and Silver Maple, and for prohibited invasive herbaceous perennials and forbs, such as Garlic Mustard and Japanese Chaff Flower, so the ban reaches groundcover and understory species as well as canopy trees.

080(d), which developers must draw from for required street trees, interior trees, shrubs and forbs; a species on Table 04-18 cannot be substituted in even where the landscaping code otherwise allows plant substitutions, and the code separately requires that any alternative landscape plan not include invasive vegetation from an adopted city, county, or state list. Because Callery Pear (commonly sold as 'Cleveland Pear' or 'Bradford Pear') and buckthorn are widely available at nurseries, developers and landscapers working on a Bloomington site plan need to check proposed plantings against Table 04-18 specifically, not just rely on a generic sense of what counts as native.