Just to follow up, I was able to paint the HillTree_02 static mesh from the kite demo as a foliage actor. I first had to open the tree in the static mesh editor and load the asset (this process took nearly an hour even on our machines). After the asset was able to be opened in the static mesh editor I changed the minimum LOD to render to 1 (for performance sake). I then applied it as a foliage actor to paint.