What is "proxy" means? Help please

Super cheese sandwich

https://www.daz3d.com/ultrascenery--ecologies-and-features-bundle-1

Forgive my ignorance. I don't know what proxy means. I see "proxy" versions of the trees but I don't want what is or what can I do with that. Thanks

Sevrin

In this case, a proxy is a placeholder.  When you render, you will see the trees.  Until then, you will just see a very low polygon placeholder, so that you are able to go about setting up your scene without getting bogged down by all the geometry.

LeatherGryphon

A proxy is something or someone who substitutes for something else.  example:  To vote by proxy is to authorize another person to vote in place of you but according to your wishes.  In the computer world you can find proxy used in network configuration settings especially in a business environment where one special, secure computer located outside the innermost business network, but still under the business' control and permitted more freedom to access the outside world.  It offers its web browser and/or email services (or other network services) to the internal business network computers as a proxy server for them in the theory that, if attacked by a hacker, he would only muck up the less critical (and hopefully more easily restored) proxy machine and not get into the more important business computers.  Essentially, the proxy server acts as a substitute for the user's machine, by taking commands from the inside network, performing a task on the outside world, getting a reply from the outside and relaying the reply back to the inside user.