I am back with more info, having had time to work a bit more this weekend.
I’d like to report this as an actual problem starting with 4.9. I appreciate your suggestions for getting past this issue but I found out that all my LODs for vegetation never actually transition and hide. I understand 4.9 handles LODs differently but the system is clearly broken for me.
So not only speedtree trees retain LODs. It is the same for grass, flowers, plants, everything that is painted on a terrain. UE 4.9 stacks all their LODs all together with full visibility at all times until the whole thing gets culled entirely.
This system still DOES work nicely in the preview window of each vegetation object, it is in game and editor viewports that it completely ignores any distances assigned to LODs screen sizes - even automatic distance doesn’t work. I’d really like to keep my LOD system as originally created and really looking forward to a fix in a future version 
Thank you,
Virgil