Gourd Trees, or Tuttaps are not actually trees at all. They are an evolved form of gourd with a hollow center, surrounding flesh, and hard outer rind. Not all forms are edible but those that are are often staple foods of their region.
Gourd Trees come in as many varieties as there are gourds. They always grow from a smaller gourd and either grow larger or stack to create height. They seem to have developed in the aftermath of spreading Chloromites killing off local trees so the gourds grew taller and replaced the local trees as shelter for birds and other animals. The animals eat and spread the Gourd Tree's seeds.
Jira is home to many intelligent species other than humans.
to date there are
Silfs - human like creatures with horns and fluffy hair who are always some variant of red & blue
Avians - Bird people
Ramlans - mountain species with tough hairs like wool and horns
Iora - stationary mushroom people
Ghosts - beings made of Artificial Magic
Merpeople - an overall term for a variety of sea born intelligent life
Crystalites - beings of sentient crystal
Halfling Crystalites - corpses controlled by parasitic sentient crystals, unrelated to the crystals of the Crystalites despite the name
Grotton - ape-like creatures who originate from the darkest parts of the Ridge
Hybrids - half animal people the result of wild magic sickness
Shifters - animals who can shift into a semi-human form
Many of these species overlap with humans due to the the grip human traits have on Jiran evolution and the fact that many species are evolved forms of humans for particular environments