Topeka ? Wheat, for sure, along with sunflowers — another obvious choice. And even some buffalo figure prominently in preliminary designs for the official quarter commemorating Kansas, released Thursday by the U.S. Mint.

But it will take a lot more than a flip of the coin to determine which of the four alternatives is chosen for the Kansas quarter, due to be released next year along with those recognizing California, Minnesota, Oregon and West Virginia.

The final sketches by mint engravers, based on submissions from the Kansas Commemorative Coin Commission, are still subject to approval by the commission, two advisory committees to the mint and Treasury Secretary John Snow.

The commission had sent five design concepts to the mint after reviewing more than 1,500 suggestions from the public. But one of them, based on a lithograph by John Steuart Curry, was withdrawn because of copyright restrictions. The lithograph depicting a farmer and his children standing in a wheat field is hanging in a building in Wisconsin.

There are some reservations about the mint’s proposed versions of the Kansas coin. Vicki Buening, director of constituent services for Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, said most of the sunflowers came back with too many petals, unlike the helianthus or “common sunflower” that has been the state’s official flower since 1903.

Buening also said one of the buffalo had too much curl in its horn, and several of the wheat stalks needed work.

“It didn’t look like Kansas wheat,” Buening said. “One person thought it looked like barley.”