When a Senecio junceus plant fruits, it produces these fluffy white, semi-spherical appendages. Each fruit in the head is equipped with its own pappus for a single, non-return flight, using random air transportation to a new life somewhere, or not.
The oblong involucral bracts are by now brown as seen here, spreading widely to allow for fruit and pappus development (Vlok and Schutte-Vlok, 2010; Bond and Goldblatt, 1984).