Static mesh foliage collision causing long load times

No given this, i think its far more likely at least one of the models has bad/invalid collision hulls or other similar issues.

Try to leave the collision on, but effectively delete all the colisions off the meshes in a test only environment.

If loading is reduced to 0, try adding a simple spheal as collision to each mesh and see if the timing goes nuts or not.

This is also assuming that you don’t just find a mesh with 100+ hulls in there or some other similar issue.

Usually, if you want to you can set up the hull generation to a reasonable vertex/hull count and generate convex hulls for the objects within engine.
Would not reccomend doing this until you test out removing all of them first…

Also, performance wise - should it come to it -
One single sphere would be the least expensive option you can use to run a replacement algorhytm from your tree manager or any other external factor ny using collision checks.