I debarked an acacia on my property down here as part of clearing but i left one to see what it would do. Seem it has grown a layer of bark back over the top of it a few mm thick.

It had full leaves and was flowering. it did however look a little thirsty, not that much though and still looked pretty healthy up top.

It was only trunk bark removed and maybe a few strands from lower branches.

So does debarking actually kill the tree?

So ive been informed that the xylem (water veins) of the tree exist in the inner hard wood (white part) while the phloem (nutrient transport veins) exist in the bark.

By removing the phloem you deprive the tree of nutrient transport and it should die relatively quickly (less than 2 years). But do they have the capacity to regrow bark?

The property I bought last year had poison ivy/oak vines growing up many of the trees all the way to the canopy. The vine stems/stalks were of all size from 4mm wide to 10cm(seriously) they were choking the trees. The way I tackled this oozy itchy blister rash plant without wide spraying of herbicide was to cut through each vine and apply a herbicide gel to the cut ends. It worked extremely well without harming the trees. Alright so here's why I typed all that. On some of the thicker vines I did not cut all the way through some I cut 75%-90% through then painted the herbicide on even with just 10% of the vine intact with poison on the cut ends they survived. Amazing how resilient plants can be. I really minimize the amount of poison I use but it was a poison ivy jungle and really not many other options that wouldnt result in me covered in blisters and the trees unharmed.

It baffles me how I manage to kill some plants I'm trying to grow

After some more researching it seems you can debark a tree as long as you leave a strip running up the tree (dont make an entire ring at all anywhere).

Funnily enough the carbohydrate content transported over 24 hours down the tree isn't drastically different from a non barked tree. If 90% of the bark strip (vertical) remains then about 700g of carbohydrates transfers, if 10% of the bark strip (vertical) remains then about 400g of carbohydrates transfers.

This means that it would entirely be possible to strip bark from a tree and it still exist so long as a full ring is never made.