Saline solutions?

The article reports that Australia, it seems, is a badly managed land with vast supplies of buried salt ready to rise up and destroy. Not only should salty sites be reclothed with salt-tolerant plants, but surrounding lands should also be planted up with shrubs and trees deep-rooted enough to lower the groundwater, which brings up the salt in the first place. Halophyte is the name given to those plants that cope well with salt. There are some that survive by blocking uptake of salt by their roots, but most of them absorb the salt and excrete it through leaf glands or store it internally. Saltbushes store salt in bladder cells on the leaf surface where much of it washes away after rain. Weed authorities are alarmed because pasture plants are notorious for having spawned many of Australia's worst weed problems. One or two agronomists are trialling native plants as a safer alternative but even these may pose a risk. Most plants cannot help but absorb soil salt, even though it blocks their inner functions.