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Salt tastes biting, puckery, savory, zesty, piquant. Salt tastes like any of numerous compounds that result from replacement of part or all of the acid hydrogen by a metal or a group acting like a metal. Directly on the tongue, salt tastes biting and puckery. In your eye or on a broken skin part it can sting fiercely.
In the case of salty taste, taste-active ingredients are salts of sodium, potassium and lithium. The most common of these is, of course, table salt, or sodium chloride. When the salt dissolves into the saliva, it separates into positive and negative ions. Only the positive ions (sodium, potassium or lithium) have an impact on salty taste.