More Africans can be keept with plants, the largest cichlid of them all is an african as well, but the best fish to keep with plants and also the largest is a Frontosa.
There arnt any New Worlds that i know of.
I've kept java fern with oscars. The trick is to have the java fern well established on pretty big chunk of rock. I would say about 3 months in a seperate tank. There is still a chance that the oscars will rip this to pieces within minutes. So you might want to play around with it a bit. And who knows, you might get lucky.