People in the flower industry reassured Kansans on Wednesday that they shouldn’t worry about the possibility of buying geraniums blighted with a plant-killing African bacterium.

State officials still couldn’t say with certainty whether any of the roughly 100 flower stems contaminated with the naturally occurring bacterium made it from Kenya to Kansas greenhouses. And more than one person said the bacterium was an everyday concern in the United States long before it wound up on a government list as a potential terrorist threat.

“We deal with this sort of thing all the time,” said Greg McDonald, co-owner of Sunrise Garden Center at 15th and New York streets, which has had no problems with its geraniums.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture said there was no evidence anyone deliberately sent the bacterium, Ralstonia solanacearum, into the country.

The bacterium could kill crops such as potatoes and tomatoes, and last year the federal government listed it as one of nine pathogens that could pose an economic threat if deliberately spread by terrorists.

Donna Gardner, greenhouse manager at Sunrise Garden Center, said she thought the issue was being blown out of proportion, in part because of the bacterium’s presence on the list.

“I do believe that the list is important. I believe that this thing should be on a list,” Gardner said. “It’s very detrimental to potato farmers. If that’s a homeland security list, then so be it.”

A California-based company, Goldsmith Plants Inc., grew the geraniums in Kenya and shipped them late last year to Michigan as rootless stems, or cuttings. From Michigan, the tiny plants went to greenhouses around the country, but the company later found some of the stems had bacteria.

“At this point, we would still be looking into facilities in Kansas to determine whether or not they did receive anything that is infected,” USDA spokeswoman Meghan Thomas said. “At this point, we have confirmed nothing.”

About 25 Kansas greenhouses had been scheduled to receive shipments of the questionable geraniums during the time they made their way across the country, said Lisa Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Department of Agriculture. So far, the department hasn’t confirmed any cases of the bacterium in Kansas, she said.

“I don’t think any of the plants that are in Kansas have been tested,” she said.

Both Taylor and Thomas, the USDA spokeswoman, said they couldn’t give out the locations of the 25 Kansas greenhouses contacted.

Taylor said consumers shouldn’t worry about getting bad flowers because it would be obvious the plants had a problem before they left the greenhouse.

Mike DeRee, a sales representative for Ball Seed Co. in Wichita, which sells flowers to Sunrise Garden Center, said that of 150 greenhouses nationwide that could have received questionable geraniums, there have been 10 positive tests and eight negative tests as of Wednesday.

“We still have some testing to do,” he said. “Certainly USDA has every right to be concerned. I just want to make it clear that it was caught fairly early … that cuttings are tracked all the way to the customer. We know exactly where these cuttings are.”