Rabbits get far less attention than deer and they do the damage that cannot be undone.
Deer browse the top of a plant and disfigure it. Rabbits work at the base in winter and strip bark, and when they take a complete ring around a trunk the plant is finished. Everything above that ring is cut off from the roots. It will leaf out in spring on stored energy, look perfectly healthy into June, and then die — which is why the cause is so often missed entirely.
The detail that matters is snow line. Rabbits feed standing on the snow, so the damage happens eighteen inches or two feet up a trunk, under the drifts, where nobody looks until the snow goes. Young trees with smooth, thin bark are the usual casualties, and fruit trees are near the top of the list.
A rabbit-resistant plant is one they take last. On anything young and smooth-barked, the more reliable answer is not a plant choice at all — it is a trunk guard, set high enough to clear the snow, on every winter until the bark roughens.