Spectroscopic observations of SN 2020lao. Top: NIR +21.5 days spectrum of SN 2020lao. Left: selected optical spectra of SN 2020lao, corrected for MW reddening and overplotted with a smoothed version. Regions affected by three prevalent telluric features are indicated with vertical gray bands and labeled with Earth symbols. The locations of the absorption minima used to infer the expansion velocities plotted in Fig. 6 are marked with black dots, with red error bars indicating the wavelength ranges that define the associated uncertainties in the positions of maximum absorption. Right: comparison between similar epoch spectra of SN 2020lao and SN 2006aj (Pian et al. 2006; Sonbas et al. 2008).