Dear WW: Thanks for the links. One important peculiarity of salt is that its solubility does not increase very much with heat, so that where it can be mined, that is more economical.
I was really baffled a year ago by story Mitsubishi wanted to put an enormous salt production plant on shores of Gulf of California. But there was reason to believe it would endanger whale breeding there, and it was cancelled.
Incidentally, "halite" name derives from Halle, Austria where it was mined thousands of years ago.
Dear Plutarch: your "selery" could be worth millions in phytoremediation in many areas of world that desperately need desalinization.