Green’s Dictionary of Slang

fern n.2

[image of flowers and ‘love’]

(US campus) someone who clings to the styles of the 1960s; an environmentalist.

[US]Eble Sl. and Sociability 63: In the eighties and nineties people who clung to the styles of the earlier decade were described with gentle disparagement by things associated with the back-to-earth movement, for example, earth muffins, ferns, granolas, grape-nuts, groovers, and hey-wows.