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Can my tree stood in water after the yard flooded and now it looks sick be fixed without removing the tree?

Depends on species and duration more than on anything you do. Silver maple, sycamore, swamp white and pin oak, river birch, baldcypress, and willow tolerate extended growing-season flooding; sugar maple, most conifers other than baldcypress, yew, dogwood, cherry, and beech are damaged quickly. What helps: get the water off — clear the blockage, redirect the downspout, cut a drainage path — then stay off the soil entirely while it is wet, because foot and vehicle traffic on saturated soil compacts it worse than the flood did. Mulch, skip fertilizer, and water through the drought that often follows, since a damaged root system cannot take up water even when it is there. Do not add soil to level the low spot; that buries the root collar and is the most common way people finish off a tree they were trying to rescue. Removal becomes the call when the root collar is decayed, conks appear at the base, or the tree has shifted.

How long you have to decide

Fine roots start dying within a few days of continuous growing-season inundation; sensitive species can be past saving in a week or two under water, while tolerant species stand weeks. Crown symptoms then run one to three seasons behind. The urgent piece is separate and immediate: while soil is saturated the tree's anchorage is at its weakest, and central Indiana's flooding rains arrive on the same fronts that bring wind. If the tree is leaning further than it was, if soil is heaving or cracking on one side, or if the root plate moves as the tree sways, stay out from under it and call the same day. Without those signs, the flood is a days-scale problem to fix and a multi-year problem to watch.

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